Executive office update: Focus on the future – the next strategic initiative

Wednesday, January 01, 2014 11:07 AM

Alfred Gilchrist, Chief Executive Officer
Colorado Medical Society

The CMS board of directors will convene in January for a weekend deep dive into the particulars of our ongoing strategic plan. Our current plan is a reality-based document that provides physician-led and exam room relevant direction to the CMS focus and the expenditure of the organization’s resources.

The impetus to refresh our plan is directly related to the current “mediquake” and the tectonic plate shifts driven by powerful economic and political forces that are at the same time both a creative disruption opportunity and a potentially predatory realignment of medical practice. As more of those realignments become consolidated practice realities, we must assure that CMS advocacy proactively anticipates these changes so that professionalism and clinically-driven care delivery is preserved and promoted.

The weekend will be dedicated to deciding where to ratchet back on less urgent priorities, ramp up on the hot zones and reallocate resources accordingly. This blocking and tackling, the fundamentals in strategic preparation, will be guided by evidence drawn from our own experience as an organization, a member survey, an environmental scan prepared by the experts at Center for Improving Value in Health Care, and the views of the CMS board of directors.

While it doesn’t take a professional survey to intuitively know what keeps physicians up at night, we have polled our members since 2008 to measure the mounting pressures and uncertainties that pull at the profession and to get perspective on how you perceive us. These surveys are vital to our decision-making and we are grateful to each of you who share your views! It’s not very practical to take a swing at a major policy challenge if there isn’t a consensus to even raise medicine’s voice, much less to make a fist. And we could hardly address your perceptions of CMS without the data. Along with your collective voice, we’ll use a top facilitator to tap into the wisdom and experience of our board of directors and consultants who will sort through the evidence to keep our goals and strategies focused and effective for you and your practice.

The new survey demonstrates plenty of opportunity to unite the profession. A top priority continues to be the need to preserve Colorado’s stable medical liability environment. This is followed by a range of second-tier priorities, such as payment reform, payer issues, quality and cost effectiveness, access to care, scope of practice and practice viability. And physician members clearly want to see CMS proactively involved in the continuing effort to “bend the cost curve.” They believe that the most influential drivers of cost in the health care system are medical device and pharmaceutical overpricing, end of life care, patient lifestyles and hospital overpricing, with misaligned payment incentives and lack of care coordination also playing an influential role.

The outcomes of the January meeting will be shared with our members and we’ll ask for your perspective on any new strategic direction. We’ll conclude the process with final decisions at the Annual Meeting in September. Your continuing input will be invaluable as we refresh and move forward. You can contact me at alfred_gilchrist@cms.org or call me on my cell at 303-475-0144 to share your views. I will hear your call.