VOLUME 33, ISSUE 2

President Dr. Beverly Philip convened the Morning Educational Meeting at 8:30 AM on Saturday and gave a brief recap of activities within the Society since the last Board meeting and actions taken by the Administrative Council and Executive Committee. Mr. Paul Pomerantz, ASA CEO then reported that membership as the major source of revenue continues to be of concern. Currently, annual renewals are behind previous years and projections.

The morning education session began with a financial update from Drs. Don Arnold (MO), Treasurer and Jay Mesrobian (WI) and a summary of the 2020 fiscal year. ASA ended 2020 with a $1.4M operating budget despite operating revenue being almost $10M lower than budget. In 2020, the ASA adhered conservative revenue outlooks and proactive cost mitigation strategies during a time of uncertainty. Revenue was decreased due to the inability to hold in person meetings, decreased membership as physicians and practices joined at lower rates. The virtual meeting exceeded break even expectations, generating a profit of $0.7M vs historical levels of $3M. Education sales rebounded and were 98% of budget. Expenses were lower due to a lack of spend on in-person meetings, travel and proactive steps to reduce staff and vendor costs. Net assets increased $3.9M, driven by investment gains of $6.8M and partially offset by an operating deficit of 2.5M, which includes $3.2M of depreciated net assets. Available unrestricted reserves are up $5.4M from year end 2019, reflective of investment gains.

After the financial update, Drs. Elmassian (MI) and de Lanzac (LA), ASA Secretary and Assistant Secretary, presented. The title of their presentation was “Membership: How You Can Help” The primary theme focused on membership being everyone’s responsibility and that as members of the ASABOD it is our responsibility to engage in bringing members to the ASA. Continued efforts remain on members and encouraging component societies to be a part of the process. State components should engage in conversations with residency programs and group practices in their communities to speak to the importance of engagement. The ASA has a group practice and resident talking points toolkit to assist component society members that engage in presentations.

The ASA Committee on Communication discussed the “Made for this Moment Campaign” that the ASA is developing with the goals to protect and preserve the specialty. Through a sustained, holistic campaign the ASA wants to raise the volume of ASA’s collective voice and effectively position and promote ASA’s agenda to increase awareness of the specialty’s role in health care, engage policymakers and health care executives given the growing need to educate and persuade them and combat aggressive scope of practice efforts by nurse anesthetist. The target audience include policy makers, health care executives, and ASA members. The final component of the morning’s education session discussed the ASA website’s (www.ASAHQ.org) new navigation and menu to make the site more user friendly.

The afternoon session began with a presentation by a representative from Tecker Internaction, LLC discussing “Best Practices for Boards”. He led an excellent presentation on the unique role of associations for successful boards in today’s environment. He discussed the strategic and fiduciary responsibilities of board members and the relationship amongst board members with membership, staff, and committees. Next Dr. William McDade, anesthesiologist and Former AMA Trustee, and current Chief Diversity Equity Inclusion Officer at the ACGME, gave an outstanding presentation on DEI in graduate medical education and important steps for board members to consider in engaging in the next steps for DEI in organizations. Finally, a presentation on the AQI and update on the progress and strategic planning of the future of AQI was presented by the Drs. Mueller, McCormick, Guffey, and Schmitz.