2025 Impact Report

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 2025, our advocacy got considerable results, including:

• Successfully sued the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to restore executive- ordered deleted public health data targeting marginalized communities.
• Defeated all scope of practice legislation that may jeopardize patient safety.
• Supported the health care workforce by establishing confidentiality protections for physician and physician assistant well-being programs.
• Ensured state and local public health responses to communicable disease and communications on vaccines will continue to be guided by the best available science.
• Passed the Medicaid Access Program to pursue across-the-board Medicaid reimbursement rate increases.
• Advocated at the federal level to oppose Medicaid cuts and to support Medicare payment reform, prior authorization modernization, and investments in physician residencies.

400 bills engaged on by the WSMA during the 2025 session.

3,000+ messages to legislators in response to WSMA calls to action.

150 participants at the 2025 WSMA Legislative Summit.

7 WSMA “road trip” events at county medical societies across the state.

72 state and federal agency rulemakings the WSMA provided formal comment on.

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 2025:

Advancing Health Equity

The WSMA Foundation is on track to reach its goal of $1.5 million in funding by the 2026 school year for our inaugural WSMA Foundation Future Physician Scholarship, a four-year scholarship supporting a student who is underrepresented in medicine and economically disadvantaged; published best practice guidelines on assuring high-quality and culturally sensitive care for specific conditions that disproportionately affect diverse communities; and provided education for physicians and teams on health equity, diversity, and inclusion with the Health Equity M&M Webinar Series and Podcast with Edwin Lindo, JD.

Better Prescribing, Better Treatment

Better Prescribing, Better Treatment promoted safe prescribing guidelines for patients on acute opioids, reducing the percentage of overall acute prescriptions above guidelines by 1.7% compared to 2024 (by 67% since the beginning of the program in 2018) and reducing pediatric acute prescriptions above guidelines by 5.1% compared to 2024 (by 41% since the beginning of the program in 2018). The program includes 17,000 participating prescribers. In 2024, Better Prescribing, Better Treatment launched an acute benzodiazepine prescribing report to decrease chances of co-prescribing with opioids and an acute buprenorphine report for prescribing treatment for substance use disorder.

Healthy Doctors, Healthier Patients

Healthy Doctors, Healthier Patients is facilitating systemic change to help reduce burnout and improve physician and physician assistant well-being at work. Powered by a Physicians Foundation grant, in 2025, the WSMA Foundation promoted the “Thriving in Medicine” Wellness Report encouraging system improvement through organizational-level intervention plans that reduce burnout and improve wellness and supported improved physician and practitioner well-being with our Physician and Practitioner Wellness Webinar Series and Podcast.

$326,000 in state funding secured by the WSMA to expand the reach of our Better Prescribing, Better Treatment prescribing reports.

225 physician and nonphysician learners accessed the Health Equity M&M Webinar Series and Podcast with Edwin Lindo, JD.

465 physician and nonphysician learners accessed the Physician and Practitioner Wellness Webinar Series and Podcasts.

150+ CMOs, CEOs, and wellness leadership received direct mail and conference education on the WSMA Foundation’s “Thriving in Medicine” Wellness Report.

The WSMA is training the next generation of physician leaders and helping physicians develop the skills they need to thrive professionally. Our education efforts reached more physicians than ever:*

• Five courses delivered to 54 physician leaders and 20 health care professionals as part of WSMA’s Center for Leadership Development, winner of a 2021 American Association of Medical Society Executives Profiles of Excellence Award.
• 11-part Physician and Practitioner Wellness Webinar Series produced highlighting different aspects of wellness for clinicians, ranging from financial literacy to interpersonal communication skills, with 231 instances of physician engagement.
• 1,768 learners’ participation reported to the Washington Medical Commission for relicensure and board certification.
• 26 Better Prescribing, Better Treatment Podcast episodes produced with 1,282 physician learners to date.
• Produced a Health Equity in Medicine Miniseries podcast fulfilling Washington state’s requirement of two hours of health equity continuing education, with 100+ registrants to date.
• 35 individual podcast episodes produced and featured on WSMA Podcasts, the official WSMA channel on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

46 activities awarded CME credit through WSMA’s CompleteCME® program partnerships with local and national non-accredited organizations.

87 activities for 518 hours with 5,641 instances of physician engagement provided by the WSMA.

1068 CME activities with more than 7,000 credit hours and 47,000 instances of physician engagement provided by 24 WSMA-accredited providers in Washington, Alaska, American Samoa, Guam, Oregon, and Hawaii.

*Unless specified, data are from 2024, the year with the most recent CME data available.

The WSMA is a trusted, respected, and effective voice for physicians, our patients, and the communities we care for, regardless of practice setting, specialty, or career choice. In 2025, the WSMA:

• Appeared in more than 540 news stories online and in print—including two front-page stories in the print versions of the Seattle Times and Spokesman-Review—15+ television spots, 70+ radio segments, nine letters to the editor, and a Seattle Times op-ed.
• Disseminated six social media toolkits promoting WSMA priorities to more than 190 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.
• 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.

749 new active physicians.

6,652 active physicians retained

13,430 members (almost 500 more than our goal of 13,000)