To Rick Snyder, M.D., the sight of blood mixing with milk resembled the swirl of a candy cane. At the age of 6, growing up in Dallas, he had fallen while delivering glass milk bottles to his family’s front door. Glass shards had instantly severed the nerves of his left hand. Feeling no pain, he gazed momentarily at a deep, S-shaped gash in his palm before heading to the emergency room, where the injury was successfully repaired.

With his curiosity stoked by emergency room stitches, Dr. Snyder completed high school at Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas and later graduated from the University of Notre Dame. His interest in treating patients needing immediate access to care led him to UT Southwestern Medical Center, where he graduated from the Medical School in 1987, following a lifelong passion that led to his service as the 158th president of the Texas Medical Association (TMA).

While his term leading the nation’s largest state medical society ended in May, Dr. Snyder continues to serve as a board member, frequenting the corridors of power in Austin, Texas, and Washington, D.C., where he is well-known for backing physician-centered legislative reforms that ultimately benefit patients. In 2021, the TMA helped lawmakers pass the gold card law, which streamlined the prior-authorization process for physicians delivering timely care.

Among other accomplishments, Dr. Snyder is former president of the Dallas County Medical Society, where he led the response to Dallas’ first cases of West Nile virus in 2012. Today, he continues to see patients at HeartPlace, the largest independent cardiovascular group in North Texas.

Continuing to advocate for solutions to some of health care’s most vexing issues, Dr. Snyder has turned his attention to the looming physician shortage as baby boomers move into older age. In a conversation during the final weeks of his term as TMA President, Dr. Snyder was already contemplating an unprecedented generational surge for medical services as the next crisis in health care.

What has been the focus of your work with Texas Medical Association?

The past year has been about raising awareness among our physicians and medical school students that we as doctors really need to exercise our political voices to advocate – not only for increased coverage but also for actual access to care and treatment, which are not always the same thing. Access to a waiting list is not the same thing as access to health care. And waiting lists will increasingly be a thing because we’re about to see an overwhelming number of baby boomers hit their 70s and 80s.

Today, we have 57,000 physician-members, and we are the largest medical society compared to any other state. Part of my work with TMA has been staying ahead of the curve and getting to know some of the legislators who can help fix the problem. In some cases, I know them as well as my own patients.

The simple truth is that the population of U.S. citizens over 65 will balloon upwards of 69 million by 2030, just as the physician workforce is about to crater. Baby boomers will discover firsthand that not enough doctors have been trained to meet demand.

How did your childhood experience impact your career?

As a child, a talented surgeon repaired my hand at RHD Memorial Medical Center and triggered in me an interest in medicine. After graduating from high school, I worked at Medical City Dallas as an anesthesiology tech in the operating room. That gave me the opportunity to observe many different surgeries, including an open-heart bypass. From a young age I was exposed to a lot of different clinical environments, and the same is true today.

How did UT Southwestern shape you as a physician?

No medical education is going to present examples of every clinical situation you’re going to encounter. UT Southwestern and Parkland Memorial Hospital are about as close as you’ll get, though. Both institutions expose students to the non-medical and social determinants of care. To achieve the best outcomes, those factors can’t be ignored.

My career and advocacy have centered on protecting the patient-physician relationship, which is under constant threat. Something we are increasingly confronted with are third parties imposing themselves on that relationship, through legislation and shifting guidelines around what care is reimbursed. Physicians increasingly need to be their own advocates. Advocacy is not an innate part of medical education, but it needs to be.

What health care trends are impacting Dallas?

Dallas-Fort Worth was just named the fourth largest metropolitan statistical area in the country with 8 million people. And we’re poised to surpass Chicago within the year. We have a lot of different stakeholders, not just academic institutions like UT Southwestern. We’re also a biotech hub.

UT Southwestern and President Daniel K. Podolsky, M.D., have done a lot to involve the institution in the fabric of the city. I’ve seen UT Southwestern really fine-tuning its relationships at the state and federal level, and a lot of different and very innovative specialists are coming here. There is incredible collaboration between the community and UT Southwestern, buttressed by Parkland as one of those rare anchor hospitals charged with taking care of a county with the highest number of uninsured patients in the country.

Although I’ve completed my service at TMA, I will continue to make the case that as physicians, we can have just as much impact on the health care of our patients through our work in legislative chambers and regulators’ offices as in exam rooms and operating rooms.

• Dr. Podolsky holds the Philip O’Bryan Montgomery, Jr., M.D. Distinguished Presidential Chair in Academic Administration, and the Doris and Bryan Wildenthal Distinguished Chair in Medical Science.