Kim Warner, MD, CMS President

Advocacy is the backbone of our profession. It shapes policy, protects our ability to care for patients, and ensures that health care policy is heavily influenced by physicians: the people who understand it best. It is also the top member benefit of the Colorado Medical Society, and one all Colorado physicians rely on – regardless of membership. I’ll return to that point in a moment and tell you why every single Colorado physician must become a CMS member and continue to invest in membership year after year.  

As physicians, we see firsthand how legislation impacts health care access, affordability, and provider sustainability; it’s about real people and real lives. Our CMS lobbyist, Dan Jablan, explains that health care policy is like your New Year’s resolutions. These are high-level goals that you set to improve your life, like being healthier or getting finances under control. Advocacy is the work you put in to achieve that policy. In the resolutions example, this is committing to a regular fitness class, eating fewer processed foods, putting aside more in savings. 

You’re not going to achieve your year’s goal of becoming healthier if you go on one run. Physician advocacy also requires returning to the work again and again. This consistency is what makes policies to improve patient care a reality, whether it’s dismantling barriers to care or defending the integrity of peer review. Our work on prior authorization took years of relationship building, surveys, data analysis, and collecting stories from patients and physicians, plus two sessions with an active bill.  

Similarly, last session’s liability caps battle was decades in the making. CMS leaders championed the original tort reforms back in the late ’80s and early ’90s, and founded Copic when other liability insurance carriers left the state and insurance premiums skyrocketed. From that point on, the Colorado Medical Society closely monitored all threats to our stable medical liability climate – and there are many every single session.  

Then 12 years ago, we helped bring together physicians and the business community to form Coloradans Protecting Patient Access (CPPA) that continued this critical work. It came to a boiling point last session when the Colorado Medical Society, within the CPPA coalition, had the fight of our lives as trial attorneys attempted to eliminate all caps on liability and eliminate confidentiality in peer review. We came through that fight keeping a cap and peer review intact, and avoided a costly ballot fight. 

CMS regularly builds coalitions to pass good policy. Nearly 20 years ago, we were entrenched in the fight to ban smoking in indoor public spaces, facing significant backlash from businesses and the tobacco industry. Yet, through bipartisan support and relentless advocacy, we succeeded in making a lasting impact on public health with the passage of the Colorado Clean Air Act.  

For me, advocacy is personal. It’s about using my expertise as a physician to inform decision-makers and shape better policies. It’s about the privilege of walking into the Capitol, engaging directly with legislators, and having my voice heard. Building relationships with policymakers, sharing the perspective of practicing physicians—even when we disagree—demonstrates why physicians’ involvement is crucial. Legislators don’t always have a deep understanding of evidence-based medicine, and it’s our job to bridge that gap. 

Here’s the call to membership that I promised. Advocacy doesn’t happen in a vacuum; it requires numbers, resources and strategic action. Membership growth is a key priority for our organization because the strength of our voice in the legislature is directly tied to the size of our membership and the resources we can allocate to advocacy efforts.  

Make sure every physician at your practice is a member. Build membership into your budget to ensure you and your group renew every year. Talk to other colleagues in your area and urge them to join. Political engagement may be uncomfortable for some, but the reality is that financial support for our political action committee, COMPAC, is one of the most effective ways to ensure medicine has a seat at the table. 

As we work through another legislative session, I encourage each of you to stay engaged. Attend our legislative events, contribute to our PAC and small donor committee, and most importantly, continue to speak up for our patients and profession. Together, we can ensure that the needs of our patients drive the future of health care in Colorado.