The American Medical Association (AMA) introduced the 21 members of its Board of Trustees for the coming year following elections held on June 7 during the special meeting of the AMA House of Delegates. Otolaryngologist Bruce A. Scott, MD, was elected for the second year to the position of speaker of the house. Prior to his terms as speaker, Dr. Scott served as vice speaker for four years.
As part of the AMA Board of Trustees, Dr. Scott is a member of the executive committee and chair of the audit and governance committees. Members of the AMA Board of Trustees are elected by physicians and medical students representing more than 190 state and specialty medical societies.
“It’s quite an honor to be chosen to preside over our House of Delegates. This year, our focus has been COVID-19 and all the changes that have resulted. We just completed our first-ever virtual meeting in June, with more than 1,500 participants,” said Dr. Scott. “We spent hundreds of hours trying to figure out how to have a fair deliberative process in a virtual format. We were limited on what we were able to consider in June due to the format, but we’re currently looking into how we can have more robust debate if our next scheduled meeting in November is another virtual meeting.”
Dr. Scott is board certified in both otolaryngology and facial plastic surgery; he is president of his five-physician independent private practice group in Louisville, Ky., is medical director of a multispecialty ambulatory surgery center, and holds a clinical appointment at the University of Louisville School of Medicine.
“Being an otolaryngologist puts me in a unique position to understand the different specialties represented in our House of Delegates. We bridge the gap between the specialties,” said Dr. Scott. “I’m still in active practice—I have an office-based practice, work in a hospital, and perform out- and inpatient surgery—so I live the issues physicians of all specialties face every day.”
Dr. Scott attended his first AMA meeting in 1987 and has attended every annual and interim meeting since. During these years, he has served as chair of the AMA Resident Physicians Section (now the AMA Resident and Fellow Section) and as the AMA Young Physicians Section’s delegate to the House of Delegates and Board of Trustees. Dr. Scott has also served as president of the AMA Foundation.
“Our methods of practice are changing with the embrace of telemedicine and cancellation of surgeries, and we’re trying to navigate those waters,” he said. “I hope to continue to be an advocate for physicians as we rise to the challenges for our patients and our profession.”