By Luke McNamee, JD
ISMA Deputy Director of Policy

The 2022 House of Delegates convened over the weekend of Sept. 9-11 to elect officers and AMA delegation members, to set organizational policy, and to celebrate the “homecoming” of our first in-person convention since 2019. The HOD considered 99 resolutions on topics such as scope of practice, access to contraception, and public health issues. Forty resolutions were adopted, 34 were adopted as amended, seven were referred to the Board of Trustees (BOT) for study and three were referred to the BOT for action. 

Stephen Tharp, MD, and Thomas Vidic, MD, were honored with resolutions of appreciation for their contributions to ISMA, the AMA and the physician community. Three deceased members of ISMA were honored with memorial resolutions: Kenneth Bobb, MD; Helen Czenkusch, MD; and Donald Rogers, MD. And former state Sen. Kevin Boehnlein received the ISMA Legislator of the Year Award.

Members continue to utilize the ISMA Pulse to share unofficial preliminary feedback on resolutions before convention. This year, the Pulse also allowed members to reply to each other, which created a robust virtual dialogue. In total, we saw a 79% increase in member participation between 2021 and 2022 (from 85 members to 152 members); a 147% increase in overall engagement (from 1092 engagements to 2,693 engagements); and a 180% increase in responses per resolution (from an average of 10 in 2021 to 28 in 2022)!

Several resolutions addressed abortion services and access to contraception, and many proposed similar or overlapping policies. The HOD ultimately chose to consolidate portions of several of them. The result was that ISMA established policy in support of access to safe medical abortions in instances of rape, incest, threat to a mother’s health or life, and lethal fetal anomalies – conditions which, in reasonable medical judgment, are incompatible with sustained life outside of the womb.

The HOD also adopted or adopted as amended several resolutions regarding scope of practice, health care, public health funding and initiatives, and provider reimbursement:

Resolution 22-35 instructs ISMA to seek legislation that requires greater involvement from out-of-state physicians who collaborate with nonphysician practitioners.

Resolution 22-40 amends ISMA policy on the appropriate tasks and procedures for nonphysician practitioners in collaborative practice with physicians of a particular specialty.

Resolution 22-31 calls on ISMA to advocate for additional public health spending, a timely directive considering Gov. Eric Holcomb and the legislature’s recent focus on improving Indiana’s public health infrastructure. 

Resolution 22-77 established ISMA policy that county health officers and the state health commissioner should remain physician-only positions.

Resolution 22-66 directs ISMA to support legislation to mandate and enforce a minimum annual cost-of-living increase in payments from private health insurance companies to small group practices.

Resolution 22-81 calls on ISMA to advocate for removing budget neutrality for Medicare physician payments and to work with the AMA to accomplish this.

Watch for the complete 2022 Actions on Resolutions, memorial resolutions and resolutions of appreciation to be posted here soon >>

See convention photos and more >>