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Patients pay the price for lack of bold reform

Every fall, New Mexicans roast their chile, watch balloons rise and breathe the piñon-scented air. Yet even as we celebrate tradition, too many families wait months for medical appointments, drive hours for care, or face the heartbreak of losing their doctors. Behind...

Lawmakers blast law professor who claimed New Mexico doesn’t have doctor shortage

A Northwestern University law professor who appeared before New Mexico lawmakers to discuss the effects of medical malpractice reform kicked off his presentation Tuesday by calling himself an equal opportunity annoyer. “Sometimes my research annoys Democrats,” Bernard...

Denish: What’s Wrong With This Picture?

The New Mexico Legislature just wrapped up a special session convened by Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham. The goal was to protect New Mexicans from looming federal budget cuts to healthcare and public broadcasting. Most of the attention focused on shoring up...

New nonprofit aims to elevate patient voices amid doctor shortage in New Mexico

As New Mexico grapples with a shortage of physicians, lawmakers have voiced frustration over what they describe as a broken health care system in the state. Doctors themselves have sounded the alarm, some advocating for medical malpractice reform and others taking to...

GOP lawmakers convene task force to examine potential medical malpractice reforms

New Mexico Senate Republicans convened a task force Monday to explore reforms to the state’s long-criticized medical malpractice system. The five GOP lawmakers argued New Mexico’s health care system lacks balance: It’s skewed, they said, in the favor of a few injured...

Press Release: Patient-Led NM Launches Statewide Summits and Video Campaign to Spotlight New Mexico’s Healthcare Crisis

A Call for New Mexicans to Demand Policy Reform That Secures Timely Access to High-Quality CareSanta Fe, NM – September 30, 2025 – Patient-Led NM today announced the launch of a series of Healthcare Summits across New Mexico alongside a new patient video campaign...

Number of doctors leaving small towns reaches new high

Doctors are leaving rural communities across the country at alarming rates. A study published by Avalere and Physicians Advocacy Institute, a nonprofit healthcare professional advocacy group, earlier this year reported that between Jan. 1, 2019 and Jan. 24, 2024 rural...

Fixing malpractice, GRT and compacts could keep doctors here

I attended a statewide Indivisible conference earlier this year in which a New Mexico trial attorney stated no, the New Mexico Trial Lawyers Association did not oppose interstate licensing compacts and that New Mexico does not need to amend our medical malpractice...

Dark Money Group Unmasked by State Ethics Commission

Earlier this year a dark money group called “New Mexico Safety Over Profit” (NMSOP) was sued by the state Ethics Commission for refusing to comply with the state law that required them to disclose the sources of their funding. NMSOP was the public face of the...

Press Release – Healthcare Champions Launch Public Education Campaign to Address New Mexico’s Medical Access Crisis

A new public education campaign has been launched by Patient-Led NM, founded by the New Mexico Medical Society, New Mexico Hospital Association, Sacramento Mountains Foundation, and the Greater Albuquerque Medical Association. The effort aims to educate New Mexicans about the policy landscape contributing to the state’s deepening healthcare crisis, which has resulted in a significant loss of physicians and growing barriers to patient care.

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New Mexico's Healthcare Stories

Patients in Peril

Patients pay the price for lack of bold reform

Every fall, New Mexicans roast their chile, watch balloons rise and breathe the piñon-scented air. Yet even as we celebrate tradition, too many families wait months for medical appointments, drive hours for care, or face the heartbreak of losing their doctors. Behind...

New Mexico’s health care crisis is forcing military personnel to decline assignments

About a year after Christine Calhoun and her family moved to Cannon Air Force Base, her 5-year-old son woke up from a nap and didn’t remember her. “It was horrifying,” Calhoun said. In Clovis, the closest city to Cannon, there are no pediatric neurologists. That...

The Price of Delay: A Doctor’s Battle to Save a Patient’s Foot

A New Mexico doctor fought for his patient through months of system delays—only to see a treatable condition become a lifelong disability.

Preventable Amputation: A Nurse Practitioner’s Story of Loss

In rural New Mexico, a hardworking rancher lived with undiagnosed hypertension and diabetes. Like so many others, he couldn’t find a primary care provider. Long waits and limited access led him to delay care—until a foot injury sent him to the ER.

By then, it was too late.

Forced to Flee: A 10-Year-Old’s Journey for Care Out of State

When no pediatric rheumatologists were available in New Mexico, one family drove 900 miles so their child wouldn’t suffer permanent damage.

Built to Break

Why New Mexico Can’t Keep Its Doctors — And What We Can Do About It

New Mexico is facing one of the worst physician shortages in the country—hurting access to care, straining our healthcare system, and putting patients at risk. But the real crisis isn’t just how few doctors we have. It’s how few stay. Here’s what you need to know...

Malpractice Reform in New Mexico: What’s at Stake for Patients and Providers

New Mexico is one of the toughest places in the country to be a doctor—or a patient trying to find one. While headlines often focus on workforce shortages or rural hospital closures, one overlooked driver of this crisis is the state's high-risk medical malpractice...

Solving New Mexico’s Health Care Workforce Crisis

With nearly every county designated a Health Professional Shortage Area, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Without bold policy action, New Mexico risks losing even more providers to burnout, relocation, or early retirement—further deepening a crisis that already threatens patient outcomes.

Myth-Busting: We Don’t Have an Ownership Crisis. We Have an Access Crisis.

Ownership isn’t the issue—access is. New Mexico’s healthcare crisis isn’t about who runs our hospitals. It’s about whether patients can actually get care. Here’s what’s really driving doctors out of the state—and what we can do to fix it.

Myth-Busting

Lawmakers blast law professor who claimed New Mexico doesn’t have doctor shortage

A Northwestern University law professor who appeared before New Mexico lawmakers to discuss the effects of medical malpractice reform kicked off his presentation Tuesday by calling himself an equal opportunity annoyer. “Sometimes my research annoys Democrats,” Bernard...

Myth-Busting: We Don’t Have an Ownership Crisis. We Have an Access Crisis.

Ownership isn’t the issue—access is. New Mexico’s healthcare crisis isn’t about who runs our hospitals. It’s about whether patients can actually get care. Here’s what’s really driving doctors out of the state—and what we can do to fix it.