Candidate for election at 2024 Annual Meeting: Lynn Jeffers, MD, MBA

Elections will be held at the Annual Meeting of the House of Delegates on June 11, 2024.

Officers and seven councils are elected by the American Medical Association House of Delegates (HOD) at the Annual Meeting. The elections are conducted during a special election session under the supervision of the Committee on Rules and Credentials and the chief teller, who are appointed by the speakers. The speaker and vice speaker are responsible for overall administration of the elections. Voting is conducted by secret ballot.

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2024-2028

 

 

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Lynn Jeffers’ forward-thinking leadership is rooted in a deep understanding of where we have been and where we could go. She is committed to our profession and moving medicine forward. She has appreciated the opportunity to have served at all levels of organized medicine and respectfully asks for one of your votes to serve on our AMA Board of Trustees.

Lynn has actively championed physician and patient issues during her three decades at the AMA from her early years on the MSS Governing Council to her current two terms on the Council on Medical Service, including as its chair, to her tenure as the current chair of the Section Council on Plastic Reconstructive and Maxillofacial Surgery.

As an advocate for AMA, organized medicine, physicians and patients, priorities for Lynn include:

• Ensuring physicians lead the medical team, from the exam room to the health care system’s top leadership
• Practices remaining viable across all practice types—private practice, employed and academic—and finding solutions that respect their differences and needs
• Acting on House-led policy by taking into account the nuances and consequences of those actions
• Anticipating the future needs and challenges for the profession of medicine and helping AMA position physicians to best advocate for our profession and our patients.

Lynn is recognized by her colleagues for her thoughtful analysis of complex issues and for her ability to dissect and advocate for sound health policy. She looks beyond the surface implications, finding the larger downstream effects and potential unintended consequences.

During her two terms on the Council on Medical Service, including as its chair, Lynn played an active role in formulating more than 100 council reports ranging from network adequacy, consolidation, corporate medicine, pharmacy benefit managers, telehealth, prior authorization, health insurers and collection of patient cost-sharing, preventing coverage losses, and payment reform.

She has also demonstrated leadership on medical economics, legislative action, government affairs, and health policy committees of county, state, and national medical and specialty organizations, crafting and successfully lobbying for passage of federal and state legislation.

In her multiple leadership roles inside and outside of the AMA, Lynn has proven to be an effective leader and communicator.

Lynn has a proven track record of dedicated and agile leadership, successfully leading change and leading in crises, such as:

• Leading her national specialty society during the pandemic as president
  • Harnessed the power of member engagement and empowerment
  • Helped to source masks and PPE for multiple institutions and our members
  • Worked with a coalition to plan for sourcing ventilators
  • Kept the society financially solvent during the crisis
• Leading two hospitals during the pandemic
  • Implemented one of the earliest convalescent plasma programs
  • Implemented a system for running vaccine clinics
  • Initiated daily multidisciplinary huddles to assess staffing, supplies, security, space, and safety, while coordinating across the county
• Spearheading the formation of a nationally accredited multidisciplinary integrated breast center with independent physicians

Her leadership roles both inside and outside the AMA span local, county, state, national, and international spheres, including:

• Council member and immediate past chair of the AMA Council on Medical Service
• Chair of the Section Council on Plastic, Reconstructive, and Maxillofacial Surgery
• Past AMA-MSS Governing Council
• Immediate past chair of District V of the California Medical Association
• Past president, Ventura County Medical Association
• Current trustee and past president, American Society of Plastic Surgeons

Lynn is a trusted communicator, asked to represent her various organizations in the media, at the FDA, to government representatives, to the community, and to the membership.

She has gained this trust because she listens to understand. She reaches across specialties, geographies, practice modes, and career stages to bring together differing viewpoints and build consensus as seen through her nominations and endorsements including the:

• American Society of Plastic Surgeons
• PacWest Conference
• Specialty Service Society Caucus
• Section on Plastic Reconstructive and Maxillofacial Surgery
• Mobility Caucus
• Cancer Caucus
• American College of Surgeons
• American Association of Plastic Surgeons
• American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery
• California Society of Plastic Surgeons
• Ventura County Medical Association

Lynn Jeffers’ earliest exposure to medicine was sitting in the hospital lobby, waiting to catch a glimpse of her father during his residency. Later she worked in his solo private practice after school and on weekends, helping with the books, answering phones and rooming patients (in the days before HIPAA!)

Lynn’s husband, an orthopaedic surgeon, took an academic position while she finished her training. They were then both employed, he in a single specialty group and she in a semi-academic role. Now, they are both in solo practice, sharing an office where in full circle, both of their children have worked. There they found their path to medicine as well, with her medical student son, recently matching into radiation oncology, and her daughter, a pre-medical student just finishing her MCAT exams. Lynn and her husband are committed to making sure that we leave them a profession and a health care system that is better than the one we have today.

That will not happen without vision, and these last few years in particular, have underscored the importance of physician leadership. In times of change and uncertainty, we seek those who can bring us together, put a greater purpose above their own, and use their experience and skills to inspire impactful collective action. Lynn’s decades of commitment and leadership have been recognized through the:

• AMA/Glaxo Achievement Award
• AMA Foundation Excellence in Medicine Leadership Award
• AMA Women Physician Section Inspiration Award
• AMA Foundation Excellence in Medicine Awards—Dr. Edmond and Rima Cabbabe Dedication to the Profession Award
• VCMA Charles M. Hair Award for Outstanding Contributions to Organized Medicine
• American College of Surgeons/ASPS Executive Leadership Program in Health Policy and Management
• Camarillo Woman of the Year Award
• Past advisor and commissioner liaison to the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars

Lynn can be contacted at [email protected] and on her practice website: www.drjeffers.com.

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• Visit the AMA elections page for information on other candidates running for office.
• Find up to date information for the June Annual Meeting of the HOD.