CMS Advocacy in Action

protecting and advancing quality, safe care 

With a single vote, lawmakers can reshape your practice — that’s why Colorado physicians depend on the strength of CMS advocacy. 

For physicians, by physicians:  

The Colorado Medical Society puts advocacy front and center – for you, your profession and your patients. Whether it’s shaping legislation in the statehouse or influencing regulation in state agencies, CMS is there – because both determine how medicine is practiced in Colorado with the power of law. Legislation writes the prescription. Regulation fills it. 

The Council on Legislation:  

Each week during the legislative session, the Council on Legislation (COL) – a diverse group of physicians from across specialties and regions – meets to review and take positions on bills that impact health care in Colorado. After COL acts, our team of physicians, staff, lobbyists, and legal experts get to work at the Capitol, making sure your voice is heard. With more than 600 bills introduced each session, CMS is your trusted advocate at the statehouse.  

Collaboration:   

The Colorado Medical Society works hand in hand with partners across the House of Medicine – including specialty societies – to amplify our collective voice. Together, we shape policy and protect the future of the profession. 

Topics we fight for that you care about:  

Prior authorization reform:  

Physician and patient demands for elimination of prior authorization barriers have driven years of meaningful outcomes. CMS has successfully championed bills to get patients the timely care they need, including laws that extend commercial health plan prior auth approvals to one or three years, ensure greater transparency, require the creation of alternative programs for prior authorization, and allow dosage changes for chronic medications. CMS also helped to remove prior auth burdens for Medicaid patients with serious mental illness.  

A focus on patients: 

• Protecting patients as technology evolves is critical. CMS physician leadership drove the passage of first-in-the-nation neurorights legislation that ensures patient privacy and protection keeps pace with rapid advances in technology. 

• From driving prevention, treatment and harm reduction to combat the opioid epidemic to growing the health care workforce especially in rural areas, we support robust public health and access to care.   
• Colorado’s commitment to patient care starts with serving those most in need. CMS has a long history of supporting the safety net and Medicaid, and this work is more urgent now than ever before.  

Scope of practice: 

Safeguarding care lies at the center of medicine. CMS has and will continue to oppose efforts that inappropriately expand the scope of practice for non-physician health care providers, including successfully killing bills that would have empowered naturopaths to prescribe most schedule III-V medications. Ensuring safe and effective care depends upon physician-led, multi-disciplinary teams. 

Stable liability climate: 

Stable liability climate and strong safety culture remain core CMS priorities, despite trial lawyer initiatives targeting non-economic damages caps and confidential peer review protections. Through key collaboration with Coloradans Protecting Patient Access, Copic and others, CMS secured passage of HB24-1472, preserving liability stability by updating non-economic damages caps. CMS also successfully blocked trial lawyers’ litigation expansion attempts that would have exposed physicians to triple damages through expanded deceptive trade practice suits. 

Physician wellbeing: 

CMS advocacy drove the Colorado Medical Board (CMB) to ensure a robust, confidential peer assistance program for physicians. In addition, CMS successfully helped champion a bill to reduce stigma around mental health care for physicians by removing problematic questions from Colorado’s medical licensing and renewal applications. Physicians deserve to care for their mental health without facing untenable choices between their wellbeing, patient care, and their profession. In poignant Senate committee testimony, COL Chair Darlene Tad-y, MD, MBA, shared, “I want to thank you for seeing me as a human being as well as a physician.” 

Practice viability:  

• CMS advocacy was pivotal in passing a bill to prohibit non-compete clauses in physician employment contracts. It ensures that health care providers can inform patients about their continued practice, new contact information, and the patient’s right to choose their provider.  

• We get it – keeping your practice viable is hard. So, we advocate tirelessly for you by defeating mandatory participation in plans, opposing misguided provider rate setting, working to ensure physicians get paid what they are owed, and fixing flawed Medicaid RAC audit programs. 
• Regulatory and administrative burdens are exhausting. So, we cut through the red tape to support lifelong learning that does not require issue-specific CME mandates, streamline the health plan credentialing process, and protect emergency access without duplicative regulation.    

Have questions or want to get more involved? Reach out to us at membership@cms.org.