Chiropractor named national president
By Phyllis Moore
Published in News on March 17, 2014 1:46 PM
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Dr. Anthony Hamm, center, of Hamm Chiropractic Associates, was recently elected president of the American Chiropractic Association. From left are Dr. Michael Simone, immediate past chairman of ACA's board of governors, Hamm and Dr. Keith Overland, ACA immediate past president.
Dr. Anthony Hamm of Hamm Chiropractic Associates in Goldsboro has been elected president of the American Chiropractic Association.
The announcement was made at the organization's recent annual meeting, held in Washington, D.C.
During his upcoming two-year term, Hamm will serve as spokesman for the ACA, traveling as an ambassador within the continental United States as well as the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.
Among the areas he envisions being part of his new duties is defining the role of chiropractic in health care, particularly as it relates to the Affordable Care Act.
"That's a pretty critical issue right now," he said. "Health care is just a political animal, whether we like it or not."
The ACA, based in Arlington, Va., is the largest professional association in the nation, advocating for more than 130,000 doctors of chiropractic, chiropractic assistants and students.
A graduate of National University of Health Sciences in 1979, Hamm is currently in his 35th year in practice, all of which has been in Goldsboro.
But he never set out to be part of the political structure of the ACA, he said.
"I became a delegate about 15 years ago and had no aspirations about moving up in the leadership. But I became interested in payment policy issues, coding, documentation," he said. "The main impetus, the thing that made me decide to pursue this presidency, I just felt like one of my aspirations was to sort of leave the profession better off than I found it."
Prior to becoming president, he was ACA's vice president, North Carolina delegate and president of the Council of Delegates. In addition to his new role, he also holds the distinction of being the first doctor of chiropractic to be elected co-chair of the American Medical Association's Health Care Professionals Advisory Committee Review Board. In that capacity, he will also sit on the AMA/Specialty Society relative Value Scale Update Committee, working to assign values to codes that health care providers use to report services.
While the presidential term is for two years, it also entails an additional two years serving as immediate past president, to transition the next leadership.
Hamm and his wife, Anne, have two children. Billy, a graduate of N.C. State University, is attending graduate school at Louisiana State University. Daughter Janna, an East Carolina University graduate, works in Raleigh.