Sean Pauzauskie, MD

As physicians, our days constantly revolve around choices. Some are routine. Some are complex. And some may change the course of a patient’s life. I find myself thinking about a simple but essential question: As we continue to make these choices, who really gets to make the important decisions in health care?

We make countless choices for and with our patients, using the years of expertise in education that we have built. Yet many Colorado physicians have experienced the frustration of seeing medical decisions increasingly shaped by people and systems far removed from the exam room. I have watched more of those choices migrate away from the people actually practicing medicine.

As I begin my year as president of the Colorado Medical Society, I believe one of our most important responsibilities is to help restore balance. Not because physicians should make every decision in health care, but because when the question is fundamentally a medical one, the perspective of the physician caring for the patient should matter.

That belief is one reason I became involved in organized medicine.

As I look ahead to the coming year, I am optimistic. Not because the challenges facing medicine are small – they are enormous. I am optimistic because I believe physicians possess more influence than we sometimes recognize.

My goal is to focus on three priorities: restoring choice in medicine, restoring humanity in medicine, and helping lead medicine’s future.

Restoring choice

Health care works best when decisions are made in the patient-physician relationship.

Health care organizations, legislators, and regulators all have an important role to play. The truth is that patients should be empowered to make meaningful choices about their own care, and physicians should be able to exercise their own professional judgment. We should never lose sight of the fact that medicine is ultimately practiced one patient at a time.

Diagnosing a patient with cancer, counseling a family through a difficult end-of-life decision, or helping someone navigate a chronic illness are decisions, not theoretical exercises. They are deeply personal moments that affect lives, families, and futures.

CMS will continue advocating for policies that reduce unnecessary barriers to care and preserve the patient-physician relationship. The goal is not to eliminate accountability. The goal is to ensure that medical decisions remain grounded in medical expertise and patient needs.

Restoring humanity

If choice is essential to medicine, humanity is what gives medicine meaning.

Physicians do many things that cannot be measured on a balance sheet. We stay after hours to answer a family’s questions. We sit quietly with a frightened patient. We explain a diagnosis repeatedly until it makes sense. We deliver difficult news with compassion and honesty.

The challenge is that health care operates within a complex economic system. Financial incentives and administrative structures are necessary components of modern health care, but they cannot become its organizing principle.

Too often, discussions about care focus exclusively on systems, budgets, regulations, and metrics. Those conversations matter, but physicians have a unique responsibility to remind policymakers and the public that health care is ultimately about people.

When coverage changes occur, when regulations shift, or when access to care becomes more difficult, the effects are not abstract. They are felt by people in our communities, our neighbors, and our families.

As physicians, we have a responsibility not only to care for patients, but also to help others understand what health care policies mean in the real world.

Physicians must lead

If physicians want health care decisions to reflect the realities of patient care, we need more physicians participating in the places where those decisions are made.

That means serving on boards and commissions. It means testifying before policymakers. It means engaging in our communities and supporting advocacy efforts through organizations like CMS.

Physicians bring a perspective that is desperately needed in public discussions about health care. We witness the successes and failures of the system every day. We understand the consequences of policy decisions not as theories, but as realities lived by patients.

Organized medicine should not simply react to health care policy after decisions have already been made. We should help shape those decisions from the beginning.

Leading the future

While much of our work focuses on preserving what matters most in medicine, we cannot mistake preservation for resistance to change.

Some of the most transformative developments in medical history are already underway. Artificial intelligence, advanced diagnostics, personalized treatments, and new models of care delivery are reshaping our profession.

Too often, discussions about technology focus on what might be lost. I am more interested in what might be gained.

Imagine technologies that reduce administrative burdens and return valuable time to physicians. Imagine documentation systems that allow physicians to spend less time facing computer screens and more time connecting with patients. Imagine tools that enhance clinical decision-making while preserving the physician’s role as the trusted interpreter of information and guide for patients.

Technology reflects the values of the people who design it, implement it, and govern it. Physicians must have a seat at that table. We cannot afford to stand on the sidelines while others determine how innovation will shape health care.

Artificial intelligence should augment physician judgment, not replace it. Technology should amplify humanity, not diminish it. Innovation should give patients and physicians more meaningful choices, not fewer.

Building together

One of the great strengths of the Colorado Medical Society is the diversity of its membership.

Our physicians practice in urban and rural communities. They work in independent practices, large health systems, academic centers, community clinics, and every setting in between. We represent different specialties, backgrounds, and perspectives.

We will not agree on every issue. Nor should we.

But I believe there is far more that unites us than divides us.

We want to provide the best possible care for our patients. We want patients to retain meaningful choices about their health care. We want to preserve the trust that society has placed in our profession. And we want to leave future generations of physicians with a profession that is stronger because of our efforts, not weakened by them.

Those are goals worth working toward together.

As physicians, we understand that meaningful progress rarely happens overnight. We see that truth in medicine every day. Healing often requires patience, persistence, and a willingness to keep moving forward even when challenges seem overwhelming.

The same is true for our profession.

I believe we can restore choice in medicine.

I believe we can restore humanity to medicine.

And I believe physicians can help lead medicine into a future that embraces innovation while remaining firmly grounded in the patient-physician relationship: one human being entrusted with the care of another.

That is, and always will be, the foundation of medicine.

Meet Dr. Pauzauskie, your new CMS president

Sean Pauzauskie, MD, is a hospital-based neurologist with UCHealth and a recognized leader in health policy and physician advocacy. A past president of the Northern Colorado Medical Society and past chair of COMPAC, Dr. Pauzauskie’s interests in medicine range from translational research to public health and policy, having worked in Washington D.C., prior to medical school on these issues. He led the effort to draft landmark legislation protecting individuals’ neural data. In 2024, Gov. Jared Polis signed HB24-1058, making Colorado the first state in the nation to extend consumer privacy protections to neural data – work that has since influenced similar laws in other states and informed new American Medical Association policy. He’s married to his wife, Jen, a hospital chaplain, and has a Siberian husky named Tika.