The North American Spine Society has released a short documentary with a "behind-the-scenes" look at advocacy efforts on Capitol Hill. The documentary covers NASS Fly-ins for members across the country to meet with their representatives and interact with speakers and policy makers during that time. It features several congressional representatives discussing the importance of political participation for spine surgeons and specialists.Several surgeons also talk about their advocacy efforts on the documentary. Topics covered of past advocacy efforts include the sustainable growth rate repeal.
"It's always interesting to see how the inter-workings of the government actually apply, and sometimes those are good and sometimes those are bad," said David Wong, MD, past president of NASS and member of the NASS Advocacy Committee, in the documentary. "It's interesting to see how chipping away over the years has had an impact. We had a meeting just earlier with some staffers from the House and the Senate Committees that oversee Medicare and for the first time we actually found them asking for physician input on some of the major issues whereas prior to that we had often gotten the message that you can practice on the individual level but you didn't really know much about policy."
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