Advocacy in Action - Building Alliances Through Partnerships

Advocating is not a one man, one organization band. It takes multiple groups to come together to amplify a message to the larger community. The ACOS participates with multiple alliances and groups to represent your interests to stakeholders and decision makers. Over the years, the ACOS’ participation has grown from working with mainly osteopathic groups to now fully engaging with partners in both osteopathic and allopathic communities.

The ACOS recently joined the Alliance of Specialty Medicine (the Alliance). The Alliance is a coalition of national medical societies representing specialty physicians in the United States. This non-partisan group is dedicated to the development of sound federal health care policy that fosters patient access to the highest quality specialty care.

Among the Alliance's highest policy priorities are:

1. Ensuring that health care reform has a positive impact on patient access to high quality specialty care while cutting health care costs to provide a more viable system for patient care in the long term;
2. Reforming the Medicare program to ensure the greatest access to specialty care for seniors;
3. Advancing reforms of our nation's medical liability system, and
4. Improving patients' access to the highest quality healthcare, in part, by assuring effective patient safety measures are in place. 

The ACOS has been a long-time member of the Health Coalition on Liability and Access (HCLA). HCLA is a key resource for Members of Congress, state and federal government agencies, the media, and the public for medical malpractice reform. The Coalition also brings to the table physician associations with members of the insurance industry and hospital groups. The Coalition is supporting the ACCESS Act which would create a federal baseline for mal practice damages and provide other reforms to make the malpractice forum worker better for both patients and doctors.

The American College of Osteopathic Surgeons participates in the Surgical Quality Alliance. The Alliance lead by the American College of Surgeons works to bring surgical specialties and anesthesiology together to define the principles of surgical patient quality measurement and develop awareness among interested parties about issues related to surgical care and quality in all surgical settings.

The ACOS continues to work with the AOA and the AMA in various workgroups to promote sensible healthcare reform. As the ACOS expands its advocacy efforts, the coalitions and alliances it is a part of will continue.