Who: Dr. Andrew Gurman, 63
New role: President-elect of the American Medical Association. He will take over as the next AMA president in June 2016.
Background: Gurman is a hand surgeon in solo practice in Altoona, Pa. He previously served as speaker and vice speaker of the AMA's House of Delegates for eight years.
Shifting vision: “You tend to look at things differently from a speaker's perspective than from an officer's perspective. I'm changing my focus and looking at advocacy and policy issues from a different angle.”
Physician consolidation: “I don't see private practice going away. I don't even see solo practice going away ... there will at least be some situations and specialties where that's the best practice. I think (consolidation) can and does have an effect on care. We don't know if it's good or bad, but it doesn't necessarily make it cheaper, which was the whole idea.”
Solving the doc shortage: “The number of graduate medical education spots has been frozen for many years, and we keep graduating more medical students, but not all of them are able to find residencies because we haven't expanded residency spots.” The federal government and other entities need to find creative ways to solve the problem, he said.