The practice of medicine in Texas in 2024 looks dramatically different than that of 20 or even 10 years ago, with a changing business landscape, complex administrative burdens, and serious obstacles to growing the physician workforce causing challenges to clinicians across the state.
To continue serving Texas physicians and their patients, Texas Medical Association leaders knew they would have to assess how doctors’ needs and priorities have changed – especially from medical communities frequently missing from the conversation. The 2024 TMA Listening Tour, launched this February, has achieved that end.
“We would be foolish and naive to think our plan is ironclad and that we have all the answers,” said TMA President G. Ray Callas, MD, a Beaumont anesthesiologist. “We have to be nimble and do well to continue to put physicians first.”
The listening tour included five stops around the state – with some stops covering multiple counties each – plus a visit to the Texas-Mexico border at TMA’s Border Health Conference in August. There, TMA leaders joined others in organized medicine to discuss challenges along the border, like health care access and human trafficking.
With more than 57,000 TMA physicians across the expanse of Texas, each facing a host of unique difficulties like financial pressures and work responsibilities, the association had to take initiative to learn different regions’ struggles firsthand and establish connections, says past TMA board member and family physician Samuel Mathis, MD.
The assistant professor of family medicine at UTMB John Sealy School of Medicine and member of TMA’s Council on Socioeconomics was glad to see the listening tour make a visit to his native Galveston, where he says it made an impact on young residents and established physicians alike.
“It was great to have leadership there to showcase to Galveston members that TMA actually is taking a look and finds membership important, even all the way down on this little island region,” he said. “It was a really good mix of individuals. We had people who are very all-in, 100 percent TMA, and then we had people who have been to a few TMA meetings, and those that have never engaged with TMA. That really helped create a good conversation.”
While the listening tour helped spark collaborative discussion between Texas’ physicians, it also served TMA’s standing goal to grow membership, says TMA CEO Michael Darrouzet, who witnessed several on-the-spot sign-ups.
Dr. Callas says the tour provided an opportunity for both members and nonmembers to become acquainted, or reacquainted, with the services the association provides as member benefits, such as wellness counseling and insurance payment assistance.
“People don’t know what we do for mental health and burnout; we also can talk about your practice management and come up with ideas,” Dr. Callas said. “People don't know that we have a liability company that's one of the strongest in the U.S., or that they get disability coverage through TMA Insurance Trust.”
To connect physicians in need with such important tools, TMA has begun to host annual events outside of Austin, which can be prohibitively expensive and far to some, and to develop focused regional events in collaboration with county medical societies.
Additionally, because physicians at listening tour stops often report the same struggles and priorities TMA has identified for advocacy, Mr. Darrouzet says the association is working to connect those county medical societies with resources.
“We learned we’re already working on issues that [physicians] are most concerned about,” he said. “We heard a lot of confirmation.”
As the 2025 Texas legislative session looms, improved connections with smaller medical communities could have ripple effects, Dr. Mathis says.
“The more TMA is in the community, the more physicians are realizing just what we as an association are offering, and I think that by moving around, my hope would be that we do get more people that are engaged,” he said. “I would argue that by going to places that are maybe not the big metroplexes, we are going to see a little bit of an increase or improved advocacy effort on the home front, because a physician in a small town in a small county may have a lot more sway or may be much more personally engaged with their state legislators.”