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APA needs your vote now!
APA will be awarded additional delegates in AMA’s House of Delegates based on the number of AMA members who select APA to represent them in special balloting now under way at the AMA. For every 2,000 votes cast for APA, the Association will be awarded an additional delegate.
APA still needs many more votes, according to Eugene Cassel of APA’s Division of Government Relations. "We strongly urge AMA members who have not voted yet and those who have voted for the Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) to vote for APA now," he said.
The AMA will count the last vote cast before the December 31 deadline, so that psychiatrists who selected AACAP or another specialty society can change their vote up to that time.
With only a few weeks remaining, it is important that psychiatrists who are AMA members vote immediately. They can do so in a number of ways:
Voters must provide their 11-digit medical education (ME) number. The ME number appears on the AMA membership card; it can also be obtained by calling (800) 262-3211.
Outgoing AACAP President Lawrence Stone, M.D., has asked AACAP members to vote for APA. "We recognize that with approximately 1,200 AMA members, the academy cannot secure an additional delegate through balloting this year," Stone wrote in a letter sent to AACAP members, cowritten with APA President Herbert Sacks, M.D.
"However, by voting for APA, your 1,200 votes will help secure additional delegates for APA and, thereby, for our Section Council on Psychiatry. The best way to strengthen psychiatry’s voice in the House of Medicine is to combine our votes."
Information urging psychiatrists to vote for APA also has been sent to the members of the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry, American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry, and American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law. District branches and their newsletter editors have been alerted to try to get out the vote.
"We need the AMA, and we have much to offer in return," Jerry Wiener, M.D., wrote in a recent issue of Psychiatric News. Wiener is an APA delegate to the AMA and a former APA president.
"The important issues on which we - APA, AACAP, and the AMA - have worked together include parity coverage for mental illness, destigmatization of mental illness, opposition to psychologist-prescribing privileges at the federal and state levels, workforce determinations, proper coding and reimbursement for psychiatric services, confidentiality and privacy of patient records, and opposition to managed care practices that intrude upon and compromise the doctor-patient relationship. We have benefited greatly and countered charges of narrow self-interest by working with the AMA on these and other issues. We have contributed also to an understanding within the AMA of the modern science of psychiatry. . . ."