Advocacy Articles
Updates about legislative and regulatory issues impacting the field of sleep medicine
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) has begun a new nationwide initiative to defend the scope of practice of physicians and advanced care providers who manage patients with obstructive sleep apnea from encroachment by dentists and other practitioners, who are not trained or [...]
On Tuesday, April 17, AASM leaders held meetings on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., at the offices of more than 30 U.S. Senators and Representatives — or 5% of the entire U.S. Congress! While that’s a phenomenal day’s work, we can - and [...]
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued a new guidance document for industry addressing safety concerns related to highly concentrated caffeine in dietary supplements. According to the FDA, products consisting of or containing only pure or highly concentrated caffeine continue to present a [...]
The AASM is headed to Washington, D.C., for our biggest, most well-represented advocacy trip in years. To make our biggest impact, we need your help today! In a political climate that becomes more chaotic and noisy by the minute, the sleep field requires your [...]
On March 28, President Donald Trump fired Dr. David Shulkin, Secretary of Veterans Affairs (VA), with the intent to nominate Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson, MD, as his replacement. In the interim, Robert Wilkie, U.S. Department of Defense under secretary of defense for personnel and [...]
A Gallup poll released March 26 shows that health care availability and costs ranked as the most common worry among American adults for the fifth consecutive year. The poll indicates that 55 percent of Americans worry about health care issues “a great deal,” while [...]
On March 26, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar swore in Dr. Robert Redfield, an accomplished AIDS researcher, as the 18th director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a position that did not require confirmation by the [...]
On March 19 the American Medical Association (AMA) released the results of a physician survey showing widespread negative experiences with the implementation of prior authorization in the U.S. health care system. In a group of 1,000 physician respondents, 9 in 10 physicians report that current [...]
AASM President Dr. Ilene Rosen and President-Elect Dr. Douglas Kirsch are among the sleep medicine leaders scheduled to participate in the FDA workshop, “Study Design Considerations for Devices including Digital Health Technologies for Sleep Disordered Breathing in Adults,” which will be held on April [...]
President Trump recently signed into law the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, a spending package that significantly impacts health care and marked the end of an hours-long federal shutdown. The federal government will be funded according to the spending Act until March 23. The [...]