Volunteer's Note
Impact the 2012 Members Business Meeting Agenda
Join Us at the Tendon Repair and Reconstruction Master Skills Course
Listserv Hot Topic: Integra
ASSH Social Media: ACS Management Tips
AMA Membership Update
ASSH Job Board Can Help You Find What You're Looking For
Good Referrals
Thank You to AFSH Donors
AMA CEO Details New Strategic Direction Centered on Three Areas
States Push to Contain Health Costs
Volunteer's Note
I had to be dragged kicking and screaming to my first ASSH Senior Member Breakfast! And this was despite the fact that the Senior Member Breakfast and Task Force had been created a few years earlier on my watch as ASSH President! But just like my first taste of eligibility for AARP, senior discounts at movies and Social Security, I wanted nothing to do with it. "Senior Member" did not suit my personal image.
The problem was that my good friend, Bob Wilson, MD, whom I had appointed as the first Task Force chairman, had invited me to the meeting and asked me to speak a little bit about the establishment and purpose of the group. After my brief presentation, I sat down to breakfast with some old (but still very young) friends and listened to some interesting and insightful narratives. At some point during that meeting, I became hooked.
Since then, the Task Force became a permanent standing committee and is now called the Senior Member Relations Committee. Its primary charges are to represent the interests of the senior/retired members of ASSH (individuals who are 65 or older and/or have completely retired from practice) and the interests of lifetime members (individuals who have been Active Members for 30 or more years). The committee also sponsors a breakfast at the
Annual Meeting every September. The breakfast meetings have proved very popular, serving as a forum for discussion of issues important to senior members and as an opportunity to hear terrific presentations from other senior members on how to grow intellectually, socially and even monetarily during retirement.
Thanks to the committee's work, several ASSH activities have been discounted for senior/retired and lifetime members, and the content of several educational programs has been modified to provide greater appeal to senior hand surgeons.
Best of all have been the fascinating narratives by colleagues on various avocations, such as aviation (Jeff Justice, MD, and Jose Borrero, MD), clock repair (Errol Ger, MD), sculpture (Jules Shapiro, MD) and business and development (Bob Strauch, MD), just to name a few. In addition, many members who could not make it to the meetings have sent in emails to the group just to stay in touch.
So I'm glad I went to my first Senior Members' Meeting. Even though I'm not yet retired, I've learned from the committee that hand surgeons are a diverse and talented lot, and there's a lot more to our creative lives than what can be accomplished during our first 30 years of practice.
Smooth sailing,
David M. Lichtman, MDChair, Senior Member Relations Committee
Impact the 2012 Members Business Meeting Agenda
Thanks to past President Robert M. Szabo, MD, and input from membership, the 2010 and 2011 Members Business Meeting were the best-attended in years.
We look to build on this momentum at the 2012 Members Business Meeting, which will be held on Thursday, September 6, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., as part of the ASSH Annual Meeting.
As a membership-based organization, the success of the Hand Society mission requires that we understand what issues are important to our members, and again this year, we're making that a priority.
We invite you to complete the
Topic Suggestion and Open-Ended Response Form to offer your ideas for this year's agenda. We will identify the most popular areas for discussion, and later, we will ask everyone to choose the most interesting topics. This open format gives you an opportunity to share your ideas and interact with your colleagues about issues that are important to you and your career.
Attend this year's meeting to be part of our roundtable meeting and join the discussion. Time permitting, there will be a Q&A.
Join Us at the Tendon Repair and Reconstruction Master Skills Course
As program Chairs, we would like to personally invite you to attend the very practical, technique-driven course that is being presented by the ASSH in August in Rosemont, Ill., titled 2012 Master Skills Series: Tendon Repair and Reconstruction.
The course will take place August 3 and 4 at the Orthopaedic Learning Center, just minutes from O'Hare Airport. The deadline to register is July 17.
During this course, you will learn from acknowledged experts technique-dependent surgical procedures that are both reconstructive and post-traumatic in scope. All manners of tendon repair will be covered by the faculty in both lecture and laboratory hands-on format, including modern methods of multi-strand flexor tendon repair best suited to withstand the rigors of post-operative motion rehabilitation. We will also cover extensor tendon repair as well as the most commonly used techniques of tendon transfer to restore hand function following trauma and nerve injury or compression.
Basic surgical concepts on how to tension these transfers appropriately will be discussed, and the participants' knowledge will be suitable refined by their hands-on exposure.
We hope that you will be able to take the knowledge gained in the course of these lectures and labs – both technical and factual – and put it to use immediately in your clinical practice.
We hope you can join us in August!
Martin I. Boyer, MD, FRCS(C)
Jeffrey A. Greenberg, MD, MS
Listserv Hot Topic: Integra
A member turned to the ASSH Physician Listerv this week with a question about Integra, and several people responded with advice and opinions.
Do you have useful information to share on this topic? Perhaps you could learn something from the discussion.
If you have already signed up for the Physician Listserv, you can view or contribute to the discussion by visiting the
archives and scrolling down to the thread titled "Integra question." If you don't know or remember your Listserv password, you can reset your password
here.
To sign up for the Listserv, visit the
Listserv page.
ASSH Social Media: ACS Management Tips
Visit the
ASSH Facebook page to read four lists we're highlighting this week that are aimed at helping Ambulatory Surgery Centers run more efficiently and effectively.
For those who don't have a Facebook account, click on the links below to go directly to the articles:
AMA Membership Update
AMA rules stipulate that in order to qualify for a seat in the AMA House of Delegates, 25% of our members must be AMA members. Currently, we are 15 members shy of the 25% mark.
Thank you to the ASSH members who notified us this week that they joined or rejoined the AMA since January 1, 2012:
Mark A. Deitch, MD
Ida K. Fox, MD
Have you joined or rejoined the AMA since January 1, 2012? Please let us know by contacting amitchell@assh.org so we can track the progress of your AMA membership. ASSH will reconcile our membership list with the AMA to get credit for our members.
Have your voice heard: Join the AMA.
ASSH Job Board Can Help You Find What You're Looking For
Explore career opportunities anytime of the day or night with JobTarget.
Visit the ASSH Online Career Center at
jobs.assh.org. The site, which is being upgraded to improve the user experience, offers a host of services for various needs:
Job Seekers - Post an anonymous resume
- View jobs
- Create a Job Alert, and new jobs that match your search will be emailed to you
- Create a Job Seeker Account
Employers/Recruiters
- Post a job
- View resumes
- Utilize recruitment products
In addition to helping job seekers and employers/recruiters, the Job Board can even help you sell your practice.
Good Referrals
Have you read or seen something on the Web that you think your fellow members would be interested in or could benefit from?
Send links to articles, studies, photos, blogs – anything you'd like to share with membership – to amitchell@assh.org, and we'll make sure the best get shared in this space.
Thank You to AFSH Donors
J. Ollie Edmunds, Jr., MD
Joanne Labriola, MD
Robert L. Morrow, Jr., MD, FACS
Thank you to the following corporate donor for its generous contribution to the AFSH:
Did you know you can now support the Foundation (AFSH) through automated monthly payments? Visit www.afsh.org/donate to complete an auto-pay form, or contact afsh@assh.org.
AMA CEO Details New Strategic Direction Centered on Three Areas
- from AMA
AMA CEO and Executive Vice President James L. Madara, MD, outlined the AMA's new strategic direction during the Annual Meeting of the AMA House of Delegates, a rolling five-year plan that focuses on three areas:
Improving health outcomes
Accelerating change in medical education
Shaping payment and delivery models to enhance physician satisfaction
The new direction will help the AMA bring a tighter focus to its efforts and concentrate on work that will have the greatest benefit for physicians and patients, Dr. Madara said. Read more.
States Push to Contain Health Costs - from AAOS
Stateline reports that states spent a nervous spring this year wondering how the Supreme Court would rule on the Affordable Care Act. They are still wondering. But despite the uncertainty, they managed to write a good deal of health legislation, especially when it came to Medicaid, the joint state and federal program that covers poor families with children. Read more.