Delegates to the NCMS Annual Meeting in Winston-Salem acted on several Reports and Resolutions during the closing session of the House on Sunday, October 24. You will find a summary of HOD actions on Reports and Resolutions on the Doctor to Doctor Blog, where you will also find brief reports highlighting Annual Meeting activities.
At the conclusion of the House session, NCMS President Douglas Sheets, MD, called a Forum of the Whole to allow Delegates to offer comments and suggestions for the Board to consider as it reviews and revises the NCMS Strategic Plan. The Board is seeking to better position the Medical Society in addressing changes created by federal health system reform.
Both Dr. Sheets and incoming President John Mangum, MD, invite members to offer their ideas in writing and submit them to Linda Carter, [email protected]. The Board is expected to finalize the Strategic Plan at a meeting in mid-January.
at 2:05 pm
A hearty thanks to the Board for offering the House of Delegates an opportunity to comment on our medical society’s future during the “Forum of the Whole.” Our leadership’s willingness to open the floor for unencumbered debate on the precipice of an important strategic planning session exhibits the wisdom in Edward H. Richards’ old nursery rhyme:
A wise old owl sat on an oak;
The more he saw the less he spoke;
The less he spoke the more he heard;
Why aren’t we like that wise old bird?
I do believe that our HOD must open itself to reinventing our methods of policy-making, representation, and operations if we are to maintain a healthy and growing medical society. Our institution must adapt to the changing face of both medicine and medical practice while maintaining the firm foundations of advocacy, communication, and business operations that have kept our society strong and prosperous. In my view, this may mean altering our concept of an Annual Meeting, with more time spent in open forums and less time spent on formal policy-making. It may mean online-only reference committees to save meeting time for discussing the important work of our medical society that rarely gets discussed in resolutions — e.g., developments in HIT, scope of practice, patient safety, etc. We do so much more as a medical society that what we talked about in Winston Salem… why not further empower our BOD and staff to act on behalf of our members to allow more time when we meet for open and honest education, debate, and discussion?
I meant what I said last weekend – I strongly believe our medical society is our last, best hope as a community of physicians in North Carolina to, as Dr. King adapted from the mid 19th century abolitionist Theodore Parker, bend the arc of our moral universe towards justice. We can have an enormous impact on the health and well-being of our patients when we speak in unison, and have been doing so for almost 200 years. I am excited to see what our BOD has in-store for the next 200, and hope that October 2011 will bring about collegial and productive action.