Abstract
Welcome to Cleveland and the 24th annual scientific sessions of the Society for Vascular Medicine. As I did last year, I would like to congratulate Dr Jim Froehlich for putting together an exceptional program committee, stimulating program, and creative new features at this year’s meeting. Each year I come away from our scientific sessions smarter and better informed. Just based on programming so far, I know that legacy is assured for this year’s meeting in spades. Perhaps what makes me most proud, however, is that our meeting represents the epitome of ourselves. We are doing so many interesting things across the spectrum of vascular medicine and disease, that members comprise the lion’s share of speaker positions at not only our meeting, but basically at every meeting with vascular disease content. For those of you in the audience, be assured – we really turn it on when we talk to the home team.
Home team. I like that phrase. I think it captures the essence of the SVM. When you gave me the honor of running this society, I gained a sense of responsibility not unlike that of parenthood. Essentially, I believed that I had the same responsibilities as a temporary guardian, trying to advance the society to be self-sufficient, fully functioning, and a leading member of the vascular community. As you know, these last 2 years have been very challenging. As I mentioned last year, secular changes in the mechanisms for support of medical societies, including a drop in funds available for meeting support, changing methods of education provision, including the rise of online opportunities, and the lack of a steady stream of new medications have left societies in general, and SVM as well, in a challenging environment to stay not just afloat but also ensure our ability to provide members with the benefits they deserve: SVM needs to be the best source for vascular education and information for the medical community. Nothing ever changes quickly enough, but today I would like to review some of the green shoots of progress that have begun and represent my hope for progress on the parental goals for the society.
Over the course of my first year in office, as we began to feel the effects of severe financial constraints, the leadership of the organization recognized the problem and conducted a strategic planning session to define our core mission, reorganize our finances, create a 12–18-month plan of projects that solidified our identity and core, and make clear our long-term goals. Probably the most important decision we made was to define the core of our mission. We have two goals: we aim to be the premier source of vascular education for the medical community and we will fight to make American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) certification a reality. That is our mission. Once the mission was defined, we began to implement the steps to make it a reality. I am happy to report that we have made progress on each front.
As I am sure you know, to bring our finances in line with our needs, we have changed both the dues and the meeting registration cost structure, in effect petitioning the membership to take a greater stake of our mission. And you have stepped up, showing me that you hold SVM just as dear as I do. Just as the federal government has required both some tax increases and some spending reductions during the recession, so has SVM. We have worked quite closely with our management team, specifically our Executive Director Lee Ann Clark and Sherwood’s Vice President Greg Schultz, to decrease our annual management fee. We have done this by reducing some administrative support and Sherwood has enabled us to split the time of one of our staff. This reduction isn’t painless and there are now tasks that have fallen to Board Members and their home institution staff to fill in the difference, but each member of the Board was willing to take on the extra work to reduce the society’s expenses. Moreover, going forward, we plan to run a leaner and meaner meeting. I guarantee you that the quality of the program will remain superior, the sense of being amongst your medical friends and family intact, and the quality of the coffee, well, adequate. These urgent changes that we made rewrite the equation for our financial stability and allow us to begin the work of refinement and new innovation for societal growth.
Over the last year, we have taken several important steps in making clear to the community at large our role in vascular education. I would submit that we participate in the educational mission of three community stakeholders: physicians and other members of the health-care team seeking advancement, societies seeking expert input, and medical device and pharmaceutical companies interested in educating their user and prescriber base. I am very proud to say that we have made important progress in each area. For our goal of providing education to the medical community, I would like to cite three examples of moving forward on our educational mission. First, I would like to thank Rob McBane and Diane Treat-Jacobson for leading the Education Committee and moving along a variety of projects. Here, I will single out Peter Mason and his committee who were charged with creating new programs to foster maintenance of certification or MOC, for both ABIM certification and American Board of Vascular Medicine (ABVM) certification. Providing MOC for the ABIM will improve the medical community’s information base and recognition of the field of vascular medicine. Providing MOC for the ABVM will begin the process of ensuring that certificate retains its signal value of expertise in vascular medicine. Second, I would like to thank Laith Alsayegh for arranging our first Vascular Day. This program, which I am now announcing to the membership at large, partners SVM and its members in their own practice environment. Laith arranged for the SVMer of his choice to come and give grand rounds at his hospital and arranged for a sponsored dinner the night before for the vascular community in Milwaukee. I think this is an excellent way to begin to organize local vascular clubs and highlight the role and value of vascular medicine in the larger panoply of providers. Finally, I need to highlight the efforts of Joe Lau and Mitch Weinberg for creating the SVM Literature Review. Basically, with modest support from the headquarters, Joe and Mitch proposed, fleshed out, and made this incredible project a reality. I think this review stands as an incredible benefit to our members and shows the incredible ingenuity residing within SVM. The program is so successful that two more members have joined on to increase the content. For me, this is a Do Not Miss feature on our website. I strongly encourage you to stop by.
I will not spend much time discussing our interactions with other medical societies and accrediting organizations, save to note that we remain a crucial participant in guidelines, appropriate use documents, and standards creation. Basically, I think Green River Ordinance, a band from Fort Worth, said it best: ‘Everywhere I look, I see your … face’.
Finally, our last education effort has been in the marketplace. I am proud to announce that we have signed a contract with a large device company to provide an educational package around lower extremity artery revascularization. Why us? Because we have great interest in the field, but do not participate in scrum around this medical problem. Because we share an interest in making sure practitioners choose the right therapies for the appropriate patients. Because, with this grant, we will provide programming that will draw attention. When this is completed, there will be slides and references and webinars and CME to be had—all free for you and the vascular community at large. This is the first of our efforts to
In the last few minutes, I want to spend some time discussing our field, our specialty, our passion. One of the questions I am asked most often is: ‘when are we going to get ABIM certification?’. In effect, what I am really being asked is: ‘when will my peers recognize that what I do for a living, what I bring to the table, what I do for patients has value?’. I try and rephrase the question that way to make clear where we have been and where we are headed. This has been a nearly two-decade process and we have made considerable progress. I would bet that if you had asked the question, ‘what is vascular medicine’ at the first SVMB meeting, its exact contours would have been ill-defined. Beginning more than a decade ago, the training program required to become expert in the field was defined. By defining the necessary experiences and knowledge base, the field was delineated and when we describe vascular medicine, the skill set and knowledge base expected to declare expertise it is similar in Cleveland, Columbus, Oklahoma City, Rochester, New York, Baltimore, and Boston. Next, we became an integral part of the vascular community. We are recognized by every member of the vascular community as a peer in the care of patients with vascular disease, including vascular surgery, cardiology, interventional radiology, and vascular nursing. This recognition is in writing in support of our application to ABIM (or soon will be). We are recognized by the federal government as key players in vascular disease as the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the United States Preventive Services Task Force have solicited our expertise and input. We are the only vascular organization to participate in the Choosing Wisely Program, jointly sponsored by the ABIM and Consumer Reports. So, when I am asked when we will be recognized by the ABIM, please realize that this organization’s approval represents the end of the process. The end of many long years of building a specialty, a community, a presence, and a force. The ABIM has undergone several large organizational shifts in the last few years, complicating the application process, but, I can promise you, that the SVM, in general, and myself, in particular, will not give up until certification is a reality. I know we will win because we are in the right and we are needed. I hope you will join me, if called upon, to help in this effort.
I would like to conclude by saying thank you. Thank you to the Board of Trustees for their hard work and erudite advice, thank you to Thom Rooke and Jim Froehlich for taking my calls and emails with a moment’s notice, thank you to Lee Ann Clark for being my partner in this time of tumult, thank you to my predecessors for their sage counsel, and thank you to everyone who has spent their precious and limited free time to help SVM. These past 2 years have been a great honor for me and I can’t thank you enough for putting your faith in me. When I see the rising level of engagement of our members, the hard work of our committees, and the promise of our activities, I feel secure that SVM’s future resides in the hands most able to navigate safely the future: our own.