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Protecting the house of medicine is the Washington State Medical Association's specialty. And we get results.

2024 Impact Report

With the support of nearly 13,000 physicians and physician assistants in Washington state, the WSMA provides a voice for the physician community and speaks with the power of many. Our members gain strength in this unity, and, together, we are steadfast in our vision to make Washington state the best place to practice medicine and to receive care.

A robust, diverse, and healthy professional and practice environment is necessary to ensure that patients and communities have access to high-quality care when they need it. We achieve this by advocating on issues of importance to our profession and our patients, providing resources to make our jobs easier, creating space for us to network and develop our professional skills, and enhancing the care we provide— including addressing cultural and clinical issues that historically have led to structural inequity.

Everything we do at the WSMA drives toward supporting and advocating for you.” – John Bramhall, MD, PhD, 2024-2025 WSMA President

It's simple: Our mission is to advance strong physician leadership and advocacy to shape the future of medicine and advance quality care for all Washingtonians. We are moving forward, together, and building a vibrant, stronger, medical profession and a healthy population. The WSMA is your WSMA and we are ...

Stronger together.

Advocacy

The WSMA defends and supports you, your patients, and the profession in the Legislature, with the governor, with state agencies, with health plans, in the courts, and beyond. In 2024, our advocacy got considerable results, including:

  • Defeating all scope-of-practice proposals opposed by the WSMA.
  • Safeguarding access to abortion services by establishing anonymity of prescribers for abortion medication, requiring ultrasounds to be provided by a licensed health care practitioner, and more.
  • Promoting access to vaccines by modernizing language in the Washington Childhood Vaccine Program to allow for the RSV vaccine and other immunizations to be included.
  • Crafting physician-led recommendations for policymakers in the critical areas of artificial intelligence in medicine, improving pain management, and solutions to workforce shortages.
  • Advocating for Medicare sustainability, telemedicine flexibilities, removing barriers to medications for opioid use disorder, prior authorization reform, and against inappropriate scope-of-practice exemptions at the federal level.

$69M increased funding for graduate medical education through the Family Medicine Residency Network and UW Medicine.

$100K+ raised for WAMPAC, the nonpartisan campaign arm of the WSMA.

#10 ranking of WAMPAC of largest business PACs in the state.

6 WSMA workforce work group recommendations successfully advocated for.

3 high-profile bills that would have adversely affected the financial viability of physician practices defeated.

Quality Improvement

The WSMA and the WSMA Foundation advance initiatives that reflect our commitment to promoting quality improvements and healthy populations across Washington. Here's what that looked like in 2024:

Better Prescribing, Better Treatment

Better Prescribing, Better Treatment

Promoted safe prescribing guidelines for patients on acute opioids, reducing overall acute prescriptions above guidelines by 8% compared to 2023 (by 57% since the beginning of the program in 2018) and reducing pediatric acute prescriptions above guidelines by 8.6% compared to 2023 (by 41% since the beginning of the program in 2018). The program now includes members of the physician assistant, ARNP, and dental associations bringing the total number of participating prescribers to more than 17,000.

Also in 2024, the program launched an acute benzodiazepine prescribing report to create awareness and decrease chances of co-prescribing with opioids, and an acute buprenorphine report to increase awareness and promote resources for prescribing treatment for substance use disorder.

Healthy Doctors, Healthier Patients

Healthy Doctors, Healthier Patients

Launched a Physicians Foundation grant-funded initiative to explore systemic changes to help reduce burnout and improve physician and physician assistant well-being at work. Under the grant funding, the WSMA:

  • Convened a wellness committee, which published Thriving in Medicine: Cultivating Choice, Competence, and Community, a playbook for those wishing to promote a culture of wellness within their organizations.
  • Created Transcending Clinical Excellence: Mastering Emotional Intelligence, a course that will teach learners about different aspects of emotional intelligence (launching January 2025).
  • Initiated the Physician and Practitioner Wellness Webinar Series, a monthly CME series covering topics identified as critical for physicians, practitioners, and their health care organizations to commit to prioritizing wellness and aligning their efforts to reduce burnout and improve professional satisfaction.
Honoring Choices Pacific Northwest

Advance Care Planning and Serious Illness

Resources and education from the WSMA continued to provide the foundation for health care decision-making for thousands of Washington’s patients, families, physicians, physician assistants, and caregivers.

16K advance directives distributed.

~10K Portable Orders for Life- Sustaining Treatment (POLST) distributed.

3 CME webinars held on clinical best practices for advance directives and POLST.

Education

The WSMA and the WSMA Foundation are training the next generation of physician leaders, helping physicians and physician assistants develop the skills they need to thrive professionally, and delivering health equity education to members and physician leaders across Washington. Our education efforts are reaching more physicians and physician assistants than ever*:

  • WSMA's Center for Leadership Development, winner of a 2021 American Association of Medical Society Executives Profiles of Excellence Award, delivered five courses to 54 physician leaders and 20 health care professionals.
  • Held bimonthly Health Equity M&M webinars to examine our biases and identify the ways systemic racism exists in our organizations, with 109 physician interactions and 13 health care professional interactions.
  • Held a Health Equity Leadership Development and Action Collective to equip health care leaders to advance health equity in their organizations. The cohort included leaders from nine health organizations, representing more than 500 physicians and health professionals.
  • In May 2024, released a Health Equity in Medicine Miniseries podcast fulfilling Washington state's requirement of two hours of health equity continuing education, with 80 registrants to date.

In addition, WSMA and 25 WSMA-accredited providers in Washington, Alaska, American Samoa, Guam, Oregon, and Hawaii provided:

992 CME activities

47K+ instances of physician engagement.

55 activities were awarded CME credit by WSMA's CompleteCME® program after partnering with local and national nonaccredited organizations.  

*Unless specified, the data are from 2023, the year with the most recent CME data available.

Operational Excellence

The WSMA is a trusted, respected, and effective voice for physicians, physician assistants, our patients, and the communities we care for, regardless of practice setting, specialty, or career choice. In 2024, the WSMA:

  • Disseminated three social media toolkits promoting WSMA priorities to more than 150 health organization partners, helping to scale WSMA's messages and programs to the broader house of medicine.
  • Chosen by the American Medical Association as one of 10 state medical associations to implement a statewide Your Care Is at Our Core reputational campaign in 2024–2025 to restore patient trust in physicians and recenter the patient-physician relationship in health care decision-making.  
  • Appeared in more than: 60 news stories online and in print 6 television spots; 13 radio segments; 5 letters to the editor; 1 newspaper op-ed.
  • Successfully leveraged the physician voice and physician community priorities across social media channels, with engagement rates across platforms well above the industry standard for nonprofits.

764 new active physicians. 

6,448 active physicians retained. 

165 members away from reaching our member goal of 13,000.  

Join or renew your membership today!