Our guest blogger is Dr. Laura Davies, a psychiatrist with a private practice dealing with forensic cases.

Doctors for America is taking our message of health care on the road. On Sunday, we kicked off the tour outside the RNC near Tropicana field. Although the RNC delayed their convention by a day, we are out in full force. On our very first stop, we had people crossing the street to ask doctors for medical information. We had passersby stopping and applauding. On of the major papers showed up and spoke with 5 local physicians, getting hometown perspective. This bodes well for our exciting and challenging journey. We will be holding a March for Health Reform on Thursday.

We are on a 12-day, seven-city tour, taking more than 50 doctors and patients from 17 states into the community. On Sunday, we brought the “Patients over Politics” blue bus out into Tropical Storm Isaac and spoke about the facts on reform and stories of patient — right outside Tropicana field where the RNC was kicking off with a party. We discussed our organization of 15,000 doctors committed to health care reform and to providing better care for our patients.

At many points along the way, we are explaining the impact of the Affordable Care Act on our patients. We have collected over 5,000 signed declarations of support for this bus tour from Deans of Medical Schools, patients, and health care professionals. Some of the stories include a grandmother who is concerned that her granddaughter cannot get the care she needs after intestinal surgery because her daughter was laid off.

Even when off duty, the “doctors are in.” At dinner last night, a former federal judge and his wife were curious about the bus, and we explained the impact of various policies on them as new retirees, which, even as well-educated seniors, they had not known. On the road, people are curious about the big blue bus and inadvertently become more educated about health care.

Health policy is not the only thing on the agenda. We are also performing blood pressure screenings, educating students about “dorm health,” and discussing women’s health issues.

As physicians, we see the terrible consequences when people do not have access to primary care. We want to help prevent illness, not treat catastrophic diseases. By going to both Presidential Conventions, we are urging all of our elected officials to put patients over politics, implement the ACA, and continue to push health reform forward.

This post was filed from Doctors For America’s 2012 National Leadership Conference in Washington D.C.

Zeke Emanuel — a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress — addressed the Doctors For America’s 2012 National Leader Conference Monday morning and urged physicians to remain engaged in the nation’s health care debate. Emanuel predicted that the Affordable Care Act will succeed in expanding coverage and slowing the growth of health care spending by 2020, but stressed that the biggest changes will occur in how health care providers deliver services to patients — an area which doctors must lead in shaping, he maintained.

Health care systems around the country are already moving away from the existing fee-for-service reimbursment system and coordinating care in a way that improves efficiency and care quality. These successes contain valuable lessons for the kind of delivery reforms the ACA hopes to foster and offer a glimpse into the system of the future. Emanuel explained what those changes will look like, relying on the real-world experiences of Group Health of Puget Sound in Washington state:

1) “It doesn’t look like lone doctors working alone. It looks like health care teams of doctors working with nurses, working with public health professionals.” Specialized groups of providers are better equiped to provide personalized care to patients with multiple chronic conditions, who consume two-thirds of the health care dollars.

2)”You don’t wait for the patient to come to you. You have active outreach to patients.” Providers track their pateints’ physiological indicators and call them to ensure that they’re complying with medication and other interventions.

3) “You have electronic health records so you can track patients over time … so that you can track physician, nurse and other quality performance in your group.”

4) “You also don’t treat patients individually. You have team huddles, you have team plans. You standardize care for patients.”

5) “You also create specialized clinics for chronic problems, have the best people you have doing that over and over.”

The results have been impressive. Sine adopting the changes, Group Health experienced a six percent drop in readmissions, a six percent decrease in length of stay, decreases in physician visits, but a dramatic increase in telephone calls and email communications. Most remarkably, the new system saved $1.50 for every $1.00 invested in the re-engering process over a 21-month period.

Providers also experienced a boost in morale “because the health staff finally felt like they were practicing the medicine they were trained to and not just doctor reimbursment,” Emanuel stressed.

That’s the future providers can look forward to. And now, they have to work to make sure it becomes a reality.

Yesterday, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) denied that doctors supported the health care bill now moving through the House and attacked the American Medical Association for endorsing the legislation:

REPORTER: What is your reaction to the AMA’s endorsement of Obama’s plan?

BOEHNER: I have yet to talk to a doctor who is supporting the plan that is moving through the House. And for the American Medical Association to come out in support of this plan, even though I would think a great majority of their doctors are opposed to it, strikes me as inconsistent at best.

Watch it:

If Boehner hasn’t “talk[ed] to a doctor who is supporting the plan that is moving through the House,” then he isn’t getting out much. In fact, the grassroots doctors organization Doctors For America has 360 members in Boehner’s home-state of Ohio, and 13,642 doctors nationwide who support the major tenets of the House bill: expanding affordable coverage, ending the discriminatory practices of insurance companies, offering Americans the choice of a public option, re-orienting the incentives in the health care system to reward quality of care and allowing doctors to spend more time with patients, and giving doctors and patients more information about medical treatments and procedures.

“As physicians, we witness the terrible consequences of the health care crisis everyday. We see millions of hard working Americans struggling to pay their premiums and worrying that a single hospitalization may force them into foreclosure or bankruptcy. As a physician, this is why I want to see health reform for my patients and for our country,” DFA President Vivek Murthy said. In an interview with the Wonk Room, Murthy explained why doctors support the major tenets of the House plan. Watch it:

Similarly, in its endorsement of the House bill, the American Medical Association applauds the legislation for recognizing “that fundamental Medicare reforms, including repeal of the sustainable growth rate formula, are essential to the success of broader health system reforms,” investing in chronic disease management, and addressing the primary physician shortage.

Having obstructed health care reform in Congress, Boehner will now go back to Ohio, where some 390 people are losing their health care every day. If he wants to “talk” to “doctors” or even constituents who support the House bill, all he has to do is listen.