Shari Erickson, MPH

Counting down the most impactful news at major medical meetings, it’s the HCPLive Five! This episode focuses on 5 key internal medicine updates from the 2025 American College of Physicians (ACP) IM meeting.

HCPLive Five - Internal Medicine Updates at ACP 2025

Thousands of internal medicine specialists gathered in New Orleans for the 

2025 American College of Physicians (ACP) Internal Medicine Meeting

 to share clinical insights, examine emerging data, and attend hundreds of sessions.

 on-site coverage, the Internal Medicine Team conducted expert interviews and reported on timely topics across hospital medicine, artificial intelligence, health policy, and more. In this edition of the HCPLive Five, the team highlights key conversations on opioid-sparing regimens in hospitalized patients, the clinical risks and benefits of AI tools, bias mitigation in AI modeling, AI's diagnostic performance in urgent care, and the ACP’s call to action on national health policy issues.

Validating Opioid-Sparing Pain Management Regimens, with Angel Goenawan, MD

Angel Goenawan, MD, a hospitalist at Bayhealth in Delaware, discussed a meta-analysis of eight randomized clinical trials comparing opioid-sparing regimens to traditional opioid-based pain management in hospitalized patients. 

The analysis showed that patients on non-opioid regimens had better pain control and used significantly lower total doses of opioids across both surgical and nonsurgical groups.

Balancing Benefits and Risks of AI Mitigation of Clinician Burden, with Ellen Gelles, MD

Ellen Gelles, MD, from the American College of Physicians, discussed how AI tools can reduce clinician workload by handling tasks like ambient documentation and message triage. 

She noted pilot studies showing improved efficiency but emphasized the need for data transparency and monitoring to avoid unintended consequences like bias or safety lapses.

Reducing Racial Bias in AI Models, with Nawsabah Noor, MBBS

Nawsabah Noor, MBBS, presented on an AI-driven tool that modifies image saturation to improve dermatologic diagnosis accuracy in patients with darker skin tones. 

Early results suggest that this intervention enhances visual clarity of skin conditions and could reduce diagnostic disparities across racial groups.

AI Bests Clinicians in Urgent Care Treatment Recommendations, with Zehavi Kugler, MD, and Ran Shaul

Zehavi Kugler, MD, and Ran Shaul discussed a study showing that AI-generated recommendations for virtual urgent care visits were rated as optimal 72% of the time, compared to 61% for clinician recommendations. 

The AI system also produced fewer suboptimal recommendations, suggesting a role for decision support tools in improving care quality.

ACP Urges Concern for Health Policy Issues, with Shari Erickson, MPH

Shari Erickson, MPH, from the American College of Physicians, highlighted key health policy threats including prior authorization burdens, data privacy concerns, and clinician burnout. 

She referenced ACP survey data indicating high levels of frustration among internists and warned of potential legal action to protect access to evidence-based care.

Kugler and Shaul's disclosures include K Health. Goenawan, Gelles, Noor, and Erickson had no relevant disclosures to report.

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Counting down the most impactful news at major medical meetings, it’s the HCPLive Five! This episode focuses on 5 key internal medicine updates from the 2025 American College of Physicians (ACP) IM meeting.



Erickson encouraged clinicians to get involved in advocacy for health policy issues they are passionate about.

Ongoing Litigation and Clinician Advocacy Amid Health Policy Turbulence, with Shari Erickson, MPH

Legal and institutional uncertainty continues to mount in response to shifting federal health policy directives. From executive orders affecting data infrastructure to changes in NIH funding processes, the cumulative impact is creating serious challenges for researchers, educators, and clinicians. Ongoing litigation

, including temporary injunctions, reflects the shifting landscape of the field at the moment, although many are waiting to see how the dust settles.

The American College of Physicians (ACP) and other organizations are concerned by a number of recent health policy issues and are advocating for these issues to be addressed. A talk at the 

ACP’s Internal Medicine (IM) Meeting 2025

 last week in New Orleans, Louisiana, led by Shari Erickson, MPH, Chief Advocacy Officer and Senior Vice President, Governmental Affairs and Public Policy, ACP, overviewed some of these key issues.

 spoke with Erickson to learn more about health policy changes are affecting all players in the medical field, including especially research at universities. She also shared how clinicians can advocate for issues that may be important to them by easily contacting their local representatives through the ACP website or getting involved with their local ACP chapter, or chapters of other organizations.

“What's really important about [contacting your representatives] is that, particularly as clinicians, they should share their stories like, what are they seeing? What is the impact on them? Because there's only so much those of us in Washington can do or say, those stories are what really matter to people in Congress, because that's actually their constituents,” Erickson told 

 “And so, what is impacting them? How is it impacting their patients?”

PRESS RELEASE: Doctors for America Sues Over Removal of Health Information From HHS, CDC, FDA Websites. News release. DFA. February 4, 2025. https://doctorsforamerica.org/pr-removal-of-health-info/

Erickson S, Lyons G, Outland B. Hot Issues in Health Policy 2025. Presented at: ACP IM Meeting 2025; April 3-5; New Orleans, Louisiana.

Erickson discussed how federal travel restrictions put critical patient care and workforce stability at risk.

Residency at Risk: Policy Barriers Facing Future Physicians, with Shari Erickson, MPH

As the United States faces ongoing physician shortages—particularly in underserved and rural areas—international medical graduates (IMGs) play a critical role in sustaining the healthcare workforce. However, pending federal travel restrictions threaten to undermine this pipeline at a pivotal moment. A significant portion of matched internal medicine residents are foreign-born, and new immigration policies could prevent many from entering the country in time to begin residency training. Beyond jeopardizing workforce stability, these restrictions risk leaving critical care gaps in regions already facing provider scarcity, threatening continuity of care, program operations, and public health access nationwide.

Many clinicians and organizations, including the American College of Physicians (ACP), are concerned by a number of recent health policy issues, including travel restrictions, and are advocating for these issues to be addressed. Shari Erickson, MPH, Chief Advocacy Officer and Senior Vice President, Governmental Affairs and Public Policy, ACP, participated in a panel at the 

American College of Physicians (ACP) Internal Medicine (IM) Meeting 2025

, held April 3-5, in New Orleans, Louisiana, discussing some of these key issues.

 spoke with Erickson to learn more about some of the high priority health policy issues outlined during the panel and how these issues will impact clinicans and patients.

“[These restrictions] will have a huge impact on our membership… to the program directors, the residency programs who now have open slots that really depended on these individuals to come in and fill these slots, and also, of course, all the patients in the areas of the country that really depend on, whether they realize it or not, international medical graduates to provide their care,” Erickson said.

Residency at Risk: Policy Barriers Facing Clinicians, with Shari Erickson, MPH

Erickson discussed key health policy issues the ACP is pushing back against during the organization’s Internal Medicine meeting.

Access to reliable health data and stable public health infrastructure is critical to safeguarding patient care and supporting clinicians. But recent federal actions—including executive orders, communication freezes, and rescinded CDC grants—are disrupting both. Key health information has vanished from government websites, disease surveillance systems are underfunded, and public health officials are being sidelined at a time when vaccine-preventable diseases are resurging. These developments raise serious concerns about transparency, accountability, and the government’s ability to protect public health.

Many clinicians and organizations, including the American College of Physicians (ACP), are concerned by a number of recent health policy issues and are advocating for these issues to be addressed. Shari Erickson, MPH, Chief Advocacy Officer and Senior Vice President, Governmental Affairs and Public Policy, ACP, participated in a panel at the 

“We have the biggest measles outbreak we've had in the country in decades, since we had a vaccine come on board… I mean, red or blue states, our members are deeply concerned about that,” Erickson told 

 spoke with Erickson to learn more about the high priority health policy issues outlined during the panel. Among these issues were the measles outbreak, missing informative sites on the CDC website, and communication freezes from the Department of Health & Human Services. Erickson also noted lawsuits against government agencies, including one put forward by Doctors for America (DFA)

, over the removal of online health information, and stated that it was not out of the question for ACP to engage in litigation as well.

“I don't think it's necessarily off the table for us either to consider if there's something that's really going to impact our members in a significant way, which a lot of this already is, we may choose to engage in some sort of litigation as well,” Erickson said.

Shari Erickson, MPH

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