Acronym

The following is a guest post from Frank Fortin, CAE, chief digital strategist and communications director, Massachusetts Medical Society.

What is ASAE's emerging value for healthcare associations?

Though 20 to 25 percent of ASAE's members are from healthcare associations, I've wondered whether the extraordinary diversity of ASAE's healthcare membership would frustrate efforts to create value inside ASAE's structures.

After attending three high energy healthcare sessions this week, my answer is: Yes!

Like healthcare itself, ASAE's healthcare members are all over the map. You have your doctors and nurses, for sure. But there are also allied health professionals, medical device groups, long-term care providers, collaborative care organizations, consultants, and even a healthcare economist. (Oddly, I didn't see anyone from health insurers for the drug industry. Maybe we can work on that.)

What we all share in common is the urgency to respond quickly to the incredible change that is already engulfing our members and our industry.

Federal healthcare reform only scratches the surface of what lies before us. It terrifies many of our members, because there are few well-tested solutions, and healthcare professionals find extreme comfort in well-tested solutions!

At the Annual Meeting, our esteemed facilitators from the Healthcare Community Committee started the dialogue by collecting lists of the things that keep us up at night. And then we all talked about what we're all doing to address these issues, one at a time.

Without exception — and I mean that without exaggeration — the things that people shared could help every one of us in the room, regardless of the type of profession we work in.

For me, the gnarliest issue that threatens the very value proposition of our medical society. Not too long ago, most physicians were independent and self-employed. Think: Marcus Welby. Today, most doctors work for somebody else. In a few years, almost everyone will be employed. Think: House.

That irrevocably changes our value proposition, because so much of what we have offered is for the doctor who doubles as a small business owner. That era is almost over. So if associations don't change, we die.

Honestly, I didn't get the golden answer this week that will let me sleep soundly at night. But I did see that others are tossing and turning over the same thing. And there are issues we will have lots of trouble agreeing on.