Bradford Holland, MD, the Texas Medical Association’s newly sworn-in president, was destined to be a doctor.
He grew up in Boulder, Colo., with both his parents teaching science. Even family vacations were ventures to museums and other science-themed settings where they would all be guaranteed to learn.
As he progressed through high school, he studied molecular biology and biochemistry, but knew he was too much of a “people person” to be confined to a laboratory setting. His uncle was an obstetrician-gynecologist, and interactions with him helped Dr. Holland envision himself as a physician – seeing the profession as “a great marriage between the science and the art.”
He’s experienced the challenges of being a physician firsthand, having practiced for nearly 30 years, first by joining four Waco otolaryngologists in an independent ear, nose, and throat practice in 2002.
In 2021, feeling the financial pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic, he and his partners sold their practice to Ascension, and he worked as an employed physician for two years under the new arrangement before moving to community-owned health care organization Coryell Health – allowing him to practice as a rural physician in Coryell’s home base of Gatesville, 40 miles west of Waco, as well as in his hometown.
“The sale of my practice to a hospital system is still a tough pill to swallow,” he recalled. “It was tough to watch that happen. It’s not anything we wanted to do … but it brought very much to the forefront the pressures of inflation, of payment, of negotiating contracts.
“The burden on private practice is tremendous, and I saw that firsthand, and ultimately those burdens became too overpowering for me,” he added. “I applaud any physician that can still be in independent practice.”
The experience reinforced the importance of the advocacy he first engaged in as a medical student in 1993, in his first semester at UT Southwestern Medical School, when the president of TMA’s medical student chapter encouraged him to attend a meeting in Austin.
“Medical policymaking just seemed to be so important, and I was driven to it right away,” he recalled.
While still in college, at the University of Colorado, he considered a career in politics and, in the summer of 1990, interned in Sen. William Armstrong’s office in Washington, D.C. Describing the experience as “very eye-opening,” he returned from the capital committed to pursuing medicine – but still kept an interest in politics that his involvement in TMA satisfied.
Even before he became president-elect in 2025, Dr. Holland served TMA in a variety of roles exhibiting his leadership and love of advocacy. He was a member of TMA’s inaugural Leadership College class in 2010, coinciding with his time as McLennan County Medical Society president, and from there, went on to chair TEXPAC, the TMA-affiliated political action committee, and serve as vice speaker and then speaker of TMA’s House of Delegates.
And now that he’s leading TMA, he’s eager to see organized medicine aim to meaningfully transform his beloved profession.
“It’s time to start talking more broadly and to start asking for more,” he said. “We’re not thinking big enough.”
When Dr. Holland envisions the state of health care in 2026, he sees a three-legged stool.
“If you look at the three-legged stool that holds patients up … the health insurance industry, that’s one leg of the stool, health care organizations and health systems are the second leg of the stool, and physicians are the third leg of the stool,” he said.
For Dr. Holland, empowering physicians to be on more of an equal footing with those other two entities will be a priority.
“Everybody’s frustrated with the size of health insurance, the profits that health insurance [companies] are making,” he said. “Premiums and costs are skyrocketing.”
Dr. Holland calls for something “major and transformational to happen,” enabling physicians to better advocate for patients concerned about consolidation’s impact on health care costs.
“We need to be asking for more and talking about the bigger picture,” he added. “We will not nickel and dime ourselves into a happy place. We need big changes, and so we need to change our rhetoric, and put more on the table.”
Dr. Holland has been an active advocate for long enough to experience major wins – the 2003 tort reform victory TMA won happened just a year after he returned to Texas from residency in North Carolina, and he characterizes that law’s passage as a “slingshot” that propelled him to further advocacy.
But he also has experienced the frustration of fighting against Medicare pay cuts in several guises, including eventually successful efforts to repeal the Sustainable Growth Rate formula calculating physician payments, and the string of Medicare payment cuts in recent editions of the Physician Fee Schedule.
“You realize, wait a second, we’re sitting here fighting not to get hit with a pay cut, when we should be getting a raise because of inflation,” he said.
Learning lessons in leadership
When he entered Leadership College, Dr. Holland wasn’t sure what to expect from the new project TMA launched to develop physician leaders who could serve the association.
“Everything that they taught me in that class, I just ate up,” he said. “The caliber of the class was just so incredibly high. I don’t think I’ve ever sat in a room with people that were so intelligent and bright and leadership-minded.”
Although he’d been interviewed before, he found the media training sessions to be particularly eye-opening, helping him understand how to develop his on-screen presence. He found the legal aspects of medicine he and his class learned to be fascinating. He also carries advice from a Leadership College lecture to this day: Don’t be afraid to ask.
“It sounds so simple … but I was always a person that didn’t like to push people,” he said. “And I remember the lecture very distinctly – why do you not ask for more if you want something? Why not ask? All they can do is say no. And that sounds like kindergarten advice in reality, but it’s something I took to heart. It really did affect me.”
He has since recommended Leadership College candidates, and has also served on the committee evaluating applicants, impressed with how the program has evolved and made a difference for the association.
In his time with TEXPAC – starting as a district chair, and serving on its Membership Committee and Candidate Evaluation Committee before becoming the executive committee chair – Dr. Holland strove to make the organization more grassroots-focused, while also encouraging larger donations by establishing the Patron Club level of support, starting with a $5,000 donation and then $2,500 each year following.
“TEXPAC is where the rubber meets the road,” Dr. Holland said. “We build coalitions to get things that we want passed and to kill things that we don’t want passed. And the way we build that coalition is by political contribution. That’s just the way that you build coalitions in Austin.
“We can talk about policy and what we want and what should be and what shouldn’t be,” he added. “But unless we build those coalitions every two years before the legislature starts, we aren’t going to get what we want. And the only way we can get we want is to build this coalition through political contributions.”
Andrew “Jimmy” Widmer, MD, who has also served as TEXPAC chair, notes that in his medical school days, he found Dr. Holland to be inspirational and through interacting with him, understood the value of TEXPAC and the importance of joining. And when it was Dr. Widmer’s turn to lead, he remembered Dr. Holland’s emphasis on a grassroots approach.
“It stemmed back from that experience and that guidance from Dr. Holland, that this does not need to be a top-down approach,” the Frisco internist told Texas Medicine. “[TEXPAC] is very much a grassroots organization, and that’s what makes us so strong and really so different from so many other groups.” (See “Supporting Medicine’s Supporters,” page 22.)
Dr. Holland became vice speaker of the House of Delegates in 2019, was elected Speaker of the House in 2021, and served in that role from 2022 to 2025.
“Our House of Delegates is really where the best ideas that become policy are formulated,” he said. “Because, as I’ve always said, learned debate among scholars about what the best policy decision is does not happen at the legislature. That’s where we’re debating all the noneducated folks, and then we are debating big insurance, and we’re debating the health plans.
“But in terms of what physicians think and debate about what physicians should recommend, that happens in the House of Delegates and through a very impressive parliamentary, democratic, and grassroots process that I think, as time goes on, I’ve appreciated more and more. Not every state medical society has that, but Texas does, and Texas goes all in on the House of Delegates.”
John Flores, MD, who served as vice speaker of the TMA House of Delegates from 2021 to 2025 before succeeding Dr. Holland as speaker, says the leadership Dr. Holland displayed as speaker shows he can handle the presidency.
“Dr. Holland has a wealth of knowledge about parliamentary procedure, and he’s able to utilize that knowledge to make sure the house is well run. He’s able to keep calm and do that when 500-plus people are watching him and listening to his every move, which can be daunting,” Dr. Flores told Texas Medicine.
He also touted Dr. Holland’s kindness and humility, and an ability to collaborate rooted in being a good listener.
“He doesn’t take offense at anything. He’ll take advice without feeling that he’s being criticized,” Dr. Flores added.
As much experience as Dr. Holland has as a physician, his perspective on medicine was forever transformed by his experience as a patient.
When he was 33, he was diagnosed with colorectal cancer after his primary care physician, James Copeland, MD, urged him to get a colonoscopy following a visit to check out what he thought was a minor complaint.
Dr. Holland then spent six years fighting cancer, undergoing surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy. A year into his treatment, it had progressed to Stage 4, metastasizing in his lungs and requiring a thoracotomy to remove masses. Yet, with support of what he characterizes as “generous and forgiving partners,” he kept working, only taking six weeks off during two separate intervals to focus on treatment.
“I was given an 8% chance of survival at one point,” he shared, adding that he’s grateful to be alive, treating every day as a gift. “I was just hoping to make Easter at one point and Christmas the next, as opposed to being a practicing physician again.”
But he persevered and was eventually declared cancer-free, as he put it, “by the grace of God and lots of prayer and lots of great work with physicians.”
“I credit every single one of them but certainly credit my primary care doctor for being insistent when I thought he was just being unreasonable,” he recalled.
In addition to expanding his appreciation and respect for the work that physicians do, he gained a greater understanding of a patient’s journey – especially when faced with bad news and difficult diagnoses.
“I know the wait. I know the anxiety. I know the thought process that goes on when you get a scan, and you don’t know the results for a little while … so I try and put myself in that place when I’m in the role of the physician,” he said. “I don’t like to make patients wait, but sometimes they have to. I don’t like to delay results.”
It also provided him with a deeper understanding of what it takes for a patient to make an appointment with him.
“No one wants to go to the doctor,” he said. “So, I always appreciate what it must be to get them there in my office and in my chair. That problem, even if it seems inconsequential or minor, I know it’s taken something to get them there, and it’s not easy.”
Dr. Holland’s been impressed by the appetite for travel of his two predecessors, Jayesh “Jay” Shah, MD, and G. Ray Callas, MD, during their terms, and he too plans to traverse the state to meet with members.
“I know it will be a big travel year. I’m looking forward to it. I’m generally a driver. I have an old pickup truck that has lots of miles on it, but I take it all over Texas,” he said, referring to his 2017 Dodge Ram with nearly 200,000 miles on its odometer.
Even before becoming president, he filled in for Dr. Shah for a few county medical society engagements and relishes the opportunity to hear from his colleagues across the state, be they in major metro areas or rural outposts.
“I look forward to that,” he said. “I think that’s really one of the highlights of the job. I will jump in with both feet.”
He also anticipates being in Austin in the lead-up to and during the 2027 legislative session, mindful of the special role that physicians will have in influencing policy on an array of issues important to medicine.
In his Waco office, Dr. Holland proudly displays a painting, made by his daughter back when she was in high school, that reads, “I didn’t go to med school to be called a provider.” It underscores his sensitivity about a term that undervalues the work that physicians do.
“That’s been a point of mine for a long time,” he said, suggesting that the association put up a “provider-free zone” sign in their Thompson Auditorium to call more attention to the concern.
“We are not providers,” he said. “We are physicians. Health care is not a provision … Health care is a healing art and a science, and it’s not a provision to be handed out by providers.”
He adds that when physicians are called providers, their level of training, dedication, expertise, and focus on patient safety is effectively dismissed. In a climate in which prior authorization and other administrative burdens already challenge modern-day physicians, Dr. Holland finds it important to place respect on the profession.
“If you take a physician from 30 or 40 years ago, and showed them what we have to do, they would be awestruck,” he said. “I think our profession is just challenged from so many angles. It’s the enormity of it all.”
Ultimately, his aim is to ensure that the physicians’ leg of the three-legged stool remains strong and stable.