The ACR Council Speaker dives into the work that goes into building the experience that is the ACR Annual Meeting, a process driven by volunteers and CSC members.
FROM THE CHAIR OF THE BOARD OF CHANCELLORS
Christoph Wald, MD, PhD, MBA, FACR
By Kurt A. Schoppe, MD, FACR
Guest Columnist
We enjoyed another solid ACR Annual Meeting in May. Councilors, alternates, members, staff and guests convened to conduct the business of the College, meet new people, exchange ideas and build upon our shared interests and challenges.
It’s easy to forget ACR’s fundamental core is the voluntary service of our members. Moreover, the care and attention our volunteers dedicate on a regular basis can get lost in the morass of important industry-level issues, advocacy frustrations and our own personal agendas. In this column, I will offer my behind-the-scenes perspective on how the meeting gets planned and executed, the critical work of our staff and the efforts of your CSC members to pull it all off. I think it will be enlightening and help us all understand how we function as a College.
First, I would like to thank Daniel A. Rodgers, MD, and David T. Boyd, MD, for co-chairing the CSC work group that puts together the ACR Annual Meeting (for the second year in a row). They were joined by Elizabeth P. Maltin, MD, FACR, FAAWR; Andrew K. Moriarity, MD, MBA; James P. O’Brien, MD, MBA; Jacob Ormsby, MD, MBA; and Chelsea R. Schmitt, MD, MPH. Naturally, ACR VP of Member Services and Governance Trina Behbahani, CAE, supervised and orchestrated much of this labor as our primary staff liaison. There is a lot of pressure on this work group to put together a coherent program to execute the Council’s obligations for the two-and-a-half days a year that we are in session.
These are the people who this year decided on the order, topics, when and where for all the meeting activities. If you don’t attend the meeting every year, you may miss some of the subtle changes we’ve made over the last few years. We experiment. Then, based on your feedback (please fill out your Annual Meeting surveys), we will either double down or move on to try new things next year. Our goal is to inspire and engage our members, get the work done efficiently, and provide an experience that reinforces the importance of the College and our work together.
The Listen-and-Learn lunch sessions have been one of those experiments that worked out well. Despite some last-minute issues (addressed gracefully by your work group), the sessions this year were well attended and sparked meaningful conversations. Together, we discussed hospital stipends, the role of the FDA in medical devices and the Mammography Quality Standards Act, the ACR roadmap on artificial intelligence, the BI-RADS® lexicon update and several more topics.
The ACR BOC and CSC meet in an all-day session on Saturday at the same time as the MSS, RFS and YPS. This causes some agenda disruptions, as various board members and executive leaders run back and forth to serve as invited speakers in other sessions.
For many members, the Annual Meeting starts on Sunday with the caucuses, though these are technically not a formal part of the Annual Meeting. While the RFS meeting wraps up in the morning and the caucuses are doing their work, the CSC is everywhere.
Most of the time, the CSC’s primary function is to speak for the Council when the group is not in session (remember, that’s 362 days of the year). We liaise with state chapters and other organizations. We work with other College commissions and committees on resolutions. ACR also conducts the work of the Council in other CSC-based ad hoc work groups, like communication, electioneering and the fire department (our dedicated group of CSC members that deals with issues as they arise for the Council, the College or states).
Our goal is to inspire and engage our members, get the work done efficiently, and provide an experience that reinforces the importance of the College and our work together.
At the Annual Meeting, the CSC’s role shifts to assisting the Council (and the caucuses) in conducting their business — aka policy resolutions. The Speaker (me), Vice Speaker (Eric M. Rubin, MD, FACR) and Trina spend several weeks before the meeting putting together the reference committees and the order of resolutions as well as prepping members of the CSC and the Board along with other delegates on how to deliver testimony for the resolutions on the agenda. This includes finding staff resources, creating fiscal notes, and fact-checking government and state regulations as well as our own bylaws, policies and procedures. The CSC comes prepared to facilitate discussion and provide feedback in our closed meeting so that we can best help authors, caucuses and the Council decide how they want to proceed. It is grinding and invisible work, and you only see the results when things run smoothly (or completely go off the rails).
Every year, we end up moving around Council sessions for a variety of reasons. Maybe we’re trying something new based on feedback or the Moreton lecturer has a scheduling conflict (like this year). These small changes are why certain traditions arise. The order changes, people like it and we stick with it. Alternatively, we have considered major overhauls to the entire meeting. I believe any decision-making group should have these types of discussions. But there is nostalgic comfort to the predictable flow of the meeting that your CSC has hewed closely to over these last several years.
The real fun starts on Monday morning after the formalities of the traditional Sunday schedule. We get down to business. Your amuse-bouche is the College Nominating Committee report and the candidate speeches. I can attest as your previous Vice Speaker that pronouncing everyone’s names correctly is one of the more nerve-racking parts of the job.
After a few awards, the Open Reference Committee reports begin in the afternoon. This is when whoever is up there under the stage lights is marshaling all their attention and professionalism. The Speaker typically will have several active chat threads on their phone: ACR staff, audiovisual staff, Trina (often also running audiovisual interference), the CSC and random members all pinging them at once while they’re at the podium. While they have both the College lawyers and a professional parliamentarian immediately on their left, standing up in front of a thousand colleagues demands a certain level of comfort with potentially looking the fool. That’s before we begin the formal parliamentary sessions.
Tuesday is my favorite day at the Annual Meeting. While I always appreciate the Economics Forum, I haven’t been able to attend it much the past few years because the Vice Speaker and I are usually handling business, editing teleprompter scripts, working with Trina and staff and making the invisible decisions behind the scenes to try to ensure a smooth afternoon session. I always look forward to the Capitol Hill Day prep when our government relations team just makes life easy and tells me what to say to our congressional representatives.
But the reason you don’t find me out on Monday night is the weapons-grade anxiety inspired by the prep for the Tuesday parliamentary session. That’s hours of time with staff, the CSC and the parliamentarians to scenario-plan our way through potentially controversial resolutions. I know our AMA colleagues are experts in parliamentary procedure, but, to me, it’s another language — one that is especially hard to learn when stage lights are stealing at least 50 IQ points that I don’t have to spare. The best thing about the session, though, is the debate and the consideration our members have for the process.
Resolutions are how our Council directs the College’s resources by pointing leadership toward the issues ACR members find important and, in so doing, shaping the industry. When you find a topic that’s important to you and your colleagues, I encourage you to reach out to your state chapters and the CSC. We want to help you put your priorities into the language of resolutions. We recognize it can be an intimidating process; the CSC is continuing to make both the process and available resources more transparent and accessible (something the communications work group will take on this year).
Your CSC and ACR staff work hard on the Annual Meeting so that you can most effectively tell us and the Board what you want the College to do for you. We want your engagement and your ideas and to see the passion you feel in your work at home. Bring all of it with you to the meeting. Make friends, strengthen ties and participate. We are the ACR.
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