Published as Submitted.
The American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) has established a new award — the AANS Distinguished Advocate Award — to recognize the contributions of an individual who has served as a strong advocate for neurosurgeons, their patients and the profession at the national, state or local level. Awardees will have demonstrated a commitment to promoting sound legislative and regulatory health policy by engaging in the legislative, regulatory and/or political processes. The award aims to recognize advocacy engagement activities, including:
- Consistently responding to neurosurgery’s calls to action by contacting and meeting with legislators and/or regulators;
- Proactively developing relationships with elected officials and/or candidates for office;
- Contributing to organized neurosurgery’s health policy, advocacy and political action activities by serving on the AANS/Congress of Neurological Surgeons (CNS) Washington Committee, AANS/CNS Coding and Reimbursement Committee, AANS/CNS Communications and Public Relations Committee, AANS/CNS Drugs and Devices Committee, AANS/CNS Joint Guidelines Review Committee, AANS/CNS Neurosurgery Quality Council and/or NeurosurgeryPAC board of directors;
- Leadership/participation in state or local medical societies, including serving as a delegate to the AANS/CNS Council of State Neurosurgical Societies (CSNS);
- Regularly contributing to NeurosurgeryPAC and/or hosting or organizing political candidate fundraisers; and
- Engaging the media (traditional and social) to promote neurosurgery and its advocacy agenda.
Each year, nominations will be sought from AANS members, and the AANS president makes the final determination. The award will be presented during a plenary session at the AANS annual meeting. In honor of his more than 30 years of active and passionate engagement in advocacy, health policy and political action, the AANS has selected Troy M. Tippett, MD, FAANS(L), for the inaugural AANS Distinguished Advocate Award.
About Troy
Troy grew up in a small town in Missouri, the son of a sharecropper and pig farmer (which may explain why he would often use various pig-related phases such as “lipstick on a pig” or “you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear” when explaining a problematic policy proposal to a legislator). He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Missouri and completed medical school and neurosurgery residency at the University of Tennessee in Memphis. In 1976, Troy moved to Pensacola, Florida, joining the Neurosurgical Group of Pensacola private practice — where he remained until his retirement in 2013.
During his career, Troy contributed at every level — local, state and national — leading the charge to improve the health care system for physicians and patients alike. Along the way, Troy’s energy and leadership skills were well-recognized as he rose to lead many medical organizations. At the local and state level, he was appointed to serve on Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration’s Medical/Surgical Neuro-Musculo-Skeletal Guidelines Committee, chairing the group from 1994 to 1995. Around this time, he also served as president of the Escambia County Medical Society, followed by the Florida Neurosurgical Society (FNS), serving as FNS president from 1996 to 1997. Troy’s dedication to advocacy was recognized by neurosurgical leaders when he was appointed as a CNS delegate to the CSNS in 1996. He brought this energy to his leadership of the Neurosurgical Society of America, serving as its president from 1999 to 2000.
Troy understood how critical it is for neurosurgery to participate in the political process. He was part of a group of neurosurgeons who established the first national political action committee (PAC) for neurosurgery, the American Neurological Surgery PAC (ANSPAC), rising to serve as ANSPAC’s chair from 1999 to 2001. During the next decade, his commitment to advocating for physicians and patients accelerated. He served as both a CNS appointee (1998 to 2002) and an AANS appointee to the Washington Committee, chairing this vital committee from 2004 to 2007. Concomitantly, Troy continued devoting time to organized medicine as president of the Florida Medical Association from 2005 to 2006 and chair of the Florida delegation to the American Medical Association (AMA) from 2005 to 2007. During his tenure as AANS President in 2009, he spent many days in Washington, DC, as Congress developed and debated the Affordable Care Act. He concluded his official service to the AANS by serving as chair of the Neurosurgery Research and Education Foundation Chair from 2013 to 2014.
Notable Accomplishments
While Troy’s contributions and accomplishments are too many to list in the confines of these pages, several warrant highlighting. Advocating to reduce regulatory burdens, he served on the AMA’s evaluation and management (E/M) codes workgroup. This effort — and Troy’s doggedness — resulted in changes to E/M documentation guidelines in 2004 that replaced a complicated, burdensome checklist system with one based on clinical vignettes. In a seminal moment, Troy helped broker an agreement with the radiation oncology community in developing a unified definition of stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS), which ensured that SRS remained a neurosurgical procedure and paved the way for fair reimbursement policies for neurosurgeons performing SRS. Finally, one of Troy’s passions was medical liability reform. For decades, he advocated at the state and federal levels for comprehensive tort reforms modeled after those in place in California. During the crisis in the mid-2000s, when neurosurgical professional liability insurance premiums were skyrocketing, and malpractice verdicts were exceeding insurance premium limits, Troy brought neurosurgery’s message of reform to Congress. He testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in 2011 at a hearing on medical liability reform legislation, which ultimately passed the House of Representatives.
Awards and Recognition
In recognition of his service, Troy received several awards, including the AANS Distinguished Service Award in 2003 and the CNS Exceptional and Distinguished Service Award in 2008. He also received the AANS’ highest honor, the Cushing Medal, in 2015. Troy’s volunteerism and advocacy have also been recognized at the local level, where he received several civic and community awards, including the PACE Award for Professional Leadership from the Pensacola Chamber of Commerce, Fiesta of Five Flags’ Bobby DePew Award for Volunteer of the Year and the Hollinger Award for Physician of the Year, Baptist Healthcare Foundation
Never Give Up
Perhaps Troy’s lasting legacy is his mentorship of other advocates and his relentlessness in trying to fix what is broken in health care, never giving up even in the face of strong headwinds and impossible odds of success. Citing Sir Winston Churchill, he never gave in, never, never, never! Whether in the halls of Congress, the state house in Tallahassee, the floor of the AMA House of Delegates, or his hospital medical staff, he never did give up on trying to make a difference for the betterment of patients and the profession.
