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New TMA Policies Aim to Strengthen Physician Workforce Pipeline - 05/14/2024

Among others, top new policies direct TMA to study ways to assist unmatched medical graduates and to advocate for increased per-resident funding to offset medical schools’ teaching costs – a rate that has not budged since 2008. Read more.

The Waco Way: How This Addiction Medicine Specialist Targets Primary Care Challenges - 05/09/2024

How one addiction medicine specialist turned passion into practicality to target behavioral health challenges in primary care.

Innovation for Every Age: Texas Primary Care Physicians Improve Access for Older Patients - 05/06/2024

Texas' population is aging, highlighting the importance of access to high-quality, coordinated primary care that bridges complex systems, various clinicians, and concurrent chronic conditions.

Coming Up Short: TMA Workforce Report Underscores Access Challenges, Advocacy Wins - 05/06/2024

While the study highlights positive growth facilitated by TMA’s ongoing advocacy, it shows shortages that mirror those across the health care professional workforce and that are particularly entrenched in rural areas; it also reveals challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and by other factors, economic or otherwise, that have complicated Texas' practice environment and impacted recruitment.

TMA Scholarship Cultivates a Diverse Workforce; Apply by May 31 - 03/25/2024

Are you sharing in the excitement of someone who's just been accepted to medical school?

Hospitals, Especially Rural Ones, Face Increased Risk of Closure as Pandemic Funds Dwindle - 01/29/2024

Now approaching the fourth year since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Texas hospitals are still reeling from its impact, facing elevated expenses, depressed patient volume, and tighter margins compared with prepandemic numbers. Rural hospitals, in particular, are at a significantly higher risk of closing.

TMA Border Health Conference Tackles Medicine’s Most Pressing Issues - 08/28/2023

As physician advocates, policymakers, and community leaders gathered in Harlingen for the Texas Medical Association’s annual Border Health Conference, the wide-ranging agenda included many of medicine’s priority issues along the Texas-Mexico border.

TMA Opposes Attempts to Expand Audiologists’ Scope - 07/17/2023

Proposed federal laws that would give audiologists unlimited access to Medicare patients without a physician referral could lead to lasting, and expensive, harm to patients, medicine once again told U.S. Senate and House leadership this week.

Proposal Would Maintain Unauthorized Scope for Chiropractors - 07/17/2023

The Texas Medical Association strongly opposes proposed new state rules that would continue to allow chiropractors to practice acupuncture and to perform other procedures and services outside the scope of practice for chiropractic.

Furthering Medical Education in Texas - 07/17/2023

Medical education in Texas is moving in the right direction. The Texas Medical Association has been a major partner in advancing medical education initiatives. This special symposium issue on medical education examines residency training costs, the Next Accreditation System, graduate medical education in rural Texas, Texas' physician workforce needs, the current state of education reform, and efforts to retain medical graduates in Texas.

Stable or Critical? Emergency Medicine Has Become Less Popular on Match Day. Why? - 07/10/2023

After four decades of steady demand on Match Days, emergency medicine has turned in lower-than-expected performances in the last two years. What has caused this change and what does it mean?

New Laws Reshape Texas Health Care Landscape - 06/29/2023

New laws are about to transform health care in Texas, addressing long-term issues like surprise medical billing, raising the tobacco-use age, and improving Medicaid. The 2020-21 state budget also includes vital funding increases for women’s health programs, graduate medical education (GME), and community mental health services

Applications Open for Physician Education Loan Repayment Program - 06/22/2023

After closing on and off for more than a year, Texas’ Physician Education Loan Repayment Program, which gives physicians a strong financial reason to practice in rural and underserved areas, is now taking applications.

Help Wanted: Texas’ physician growth strong, but recruitment, diversity still needed - 06/21/2023

Texas' physician workforce has enjoyed strong growth, but there still aren't enough doctors to go around and more diversity is needed.

House of Delegates Tackles Health Care Workforce Shortages - 05/25/2023

As Texas continues to face health care workforce shortages, particularly in rural areas, the Texas Medical Association House of Delegates responded to those concerns with new policies aimed at bolstering the ranks of medical students, residents, physicians, and bedside nurses at its annual TexMed conference last week.

Removing Texas Physicians From the Health Care Team Would be Harmful, Costly - 05/04/2023

Op-ed by Texas Medical Association (TMA) President Gary W. Floyd, MD, and Board of Trustees Chair G. Ray Callas, MD, about legislation proposing to give advanced practice registered nurses and other providers independent practice authority without physician supervision.

Help TMA Fight Independent Practice For APRNs - 05/02/2023

Please contact your state lawmakers today through the new TMA Grassroots Action Center. Let them know you support physician-led, team-based care. Tell them how much you learned in your years of medical school, residency, and beyond. Tell them why APRNs are NOT the answer to Texas’ physician shortage. Ask them to say “No” to the APRNs and to help the Texas Medical Association stop them.

Medicine Blasts Scope Attacks at the Texas Legislature - 04/24/2023

Nonphysician practitioners (NPPs) are redoubling their efforts on behalf of scope-of-practice expansion this session, including a pair of bills that seek full independent practice authority for advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs). But the Texas Medical Association is pushing back with equal force, armed with a growing body of research that shows removing physician oversight of the health care team undermines patient safety and health care cost containment.

TMA Decries Scope Bills That Would Allow Nurses to Practice Independently - 04/24/2023

Just three days before the bill-filing deadline, state lawmakers filed a pair of bills that would allow advanced practice registered nurses to practice independently.

U.S. Main Residency Match Posts Another Year of Record-High Positions - 03/27/2023

If the 2023 Main Residency Match was a patient, you’d have to say that the vital signs were strong.

Lege Poised to Boost GME Funding; TMA Urges Rural Workforce Investment - 03/22/2023

With a record-high budget at its disposal, the Texas Legislature seems poised to increase funding for graduate medical education in the 2024-25 biennium, fulfilling one of the Texas Medical Association’s legislative priorities. But physicians say more must be done to address the state’s physician workforce shortage, especially in primary care and in rural and underserved areas.

TMA’s “Battle This Session” Begins: Fighting Scope Creep - 03/16/2023

As expected, several scope-of-practice expansion attempts have crept their way into the more than 800 bills the Texas Medical Association is already tracking so far this legislative session, underscoring why fighting scope creep is medicine’s top priority.

Legislative Priority #1: Scope of Practice Encroachments, Graduate Medical Education Funding - 01/06/2023

Goal Protect independent medical diagnosing, treatment, and prescribing as the practice of medicine address workforce shortages in a way that ensures all patients have access to the same standard of care and keeps pace with Texas’ outsized population

Growing Representation: TMA's Diversity in Medicine Scholarship Cultivates a Representative Workforce - 12/04/2022

The Texas Medical Association's recently renamed Diversity in Medicine Scholarship program aims to boost underrepresented applicants to Texas medical schools, physicians caring for medically underserved populations, and diversity within the physician workforce.

A Revolving Door: Persistent Staffing Shortages Plague Practices - 12/04/2022

Many medical practices that are struggling with staffing have found stopgap solutions, such as offering hiring wages and reconsidering their divisions of labor, but these may not be sustainable in the long term.