MSSNY Pulse – June 26, 2026

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• Key Point: The AMA House of Delegates voted to fund independent studies comparing outcomes between physician-led care and autonomous non-physician practitioner care models.
• Why it Matters: Legislators frequently rely on claims regarding care equivalency when considering scope-of-practice expansions.
• Impact on Patients and Practices: Research will examine patient safety, quality, utilization, access, cost, and health outcomes.

For physicians navigating increasing workforce pressures and ongoing scope-of-practice debates, ensuring that healthcare policy is guided by objective evidence remains critically important. At the 2026 American Medical Association House of Delegates meeting, delegates approved a measure directing the AMA to fund independent, academically rigorous studies comparing patient outcomes between physician-led care models and autonomous non-physician practitioner care models.

Supporters of the measure argued that lawmakers are frequently presented with claims suggesting nurse practitioners and physician assistants provide care equivalent to physicians in all settings. Delegates emphasized that many existing studies involve limited clinical scenarios, physician oversight, or low-acuity patient populations and may not fully reflect the complexity of independent practice.

The newly approved research initiative will focus on patient safety, quality of care, healthcare utilization, access, costs, and overall health outcomes. Findings are intended to be developed through independent academic researchers and published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

For MSSNY and New York physicians, this effort aligns with longstanding advocacy supporting physician-led, team-based care. As healthcare delivery evolves, policymakers, regulators, and patients deserve access to objective data that accurately evaluates how different care models affect outcomes.

Your colleagues across New York understand that patient safety must remain the foundation of healthcare policy. MSSNY continues to advocate for evidence-based decision-making that protects patients while supporting high-quality, coordinated care delivered by physician-led teams.

AMA to Fund Studies Comparing Care From Physicians vs NPs, PAs (Clark, Medscape, 6/10).

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When patients lose health insurance coverage, they often look to their physician’s office for guidance on where to turn next. MSSNY is sharing a helpful resource flyer that outlines options for accessing medical, dental, behavioral health, and prescription services for uninsured or underinsured New Yorkers.

The flyer includes information on:

• Community Health Centers (FQHCs) offering low-cost care
• Mental health and crisis support resources, including 988
• Community assistance services through 211
• Prescription savings programs and patient assistance resources
• State and local programs that may help patients continue accessing care

We encourage physicians and practice staff to keep this resource available for patients who may be experiencing a loss of coverage or financial barriers to care.

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Legacy Letters are most often associated with financial inheritance — providing the story and intention behind what is passed to the next generation. But for physicians, they can serve a different, but equally compelling purpose: they can formally document the values, clinical philosophy, and defining people and experiences behind a distinguished medical career, so that what was learned is preserved and intentionally passed forward.

In this context, a Legacy Letter is a structured, reflective document — typically developed with the goal of becoming a printed booklet that is distributed to an institution, a department, colleagues, family members, the next generation of physicians or all of the above.

They can be written at any time, but key moments of transition make Legacy Letters especially worth considering: retirement, departure from a long-held institution, a significant health event, or simply the recognition that the time is right to do so.

The Anatomy of a Physician’s Legacy Letter

A Legacy Letter can include whatever matters most to you, though the following offers a sense of what physicians typically choose to address and what you might want to consider:

• Clinical Philosophy and Core Principles: The principles and values that guided your decision-making across a career.
• Defining Moments: Cases, conversations or turning points that changed how you thought about care or yourself as a physician.
• Patients and Families: Not necessarily the most dramatic cases, but the ones who made a mark or taught you something lasting.
• Counsel for the Next Generation: The hard-won insight you wish someone had shared with you early on.
• The State of the Specialty: Your perspective on where your field has been and where it is going.
• Those Who Shaped the Work: Mentors, colleagues or others who influenced your thinking, your character and/or your career.
• Life Beyond the Practice: Volunteer work, teaching, advocacy, community involvement or personal pursuits that gave your career broader meaning.
• Resources and Stewardship: If applicable, reflections on how accumulated financial resources were built through clinical work, and how you intend them to be used.
• What the Career Demanded — and Delivered: A reflection on the personal dimensions of a life in medicine: the sacrifices, the rewards, and what you would do the same or differently.

Whatever it ultimately contains, a Legacy Letter ensures that what was built across a career in medicine is understood, honored, and carried forward.

For individuals who may not have the time or who desire assistance, professional support is available. To learn more, please visit LegacyWritingSupport.com.