President's Message
Dear Fellow Mohs College Member,
The first thing I would like to do before going any further is to acknowledge and thank Brett Coldiron for a terrific job not only as our past president but for all the work he has done for the ACMS. His hard work, desire, and passion to make sure that we are fairly reimbursed for our efforts have been nothing short of outstanding. I personally thank Brett and I look forward to his ongoing involvement with the ACMS. No doubt, I will turn to him on a frequent and regular basis for his thoughts and insights. If you were unable to attend the annual meeting in Chicago or unable to attend the business meeting on Friday afternoon, I had the opportunity to present what I refer to as the "ACMS Top Ten Checklist for Success," which I hope will be the cornerstone for my presidency this coming year.
1. Vision and Self Inspection
I think it is important for us to ask where we have been. What is our future direction and how should we rework our strategic goals? We need to focus on the important issues, which are quality patient care and a fair value for the work that we do. It is imperative that we prioritize the needs of our members and be proactive and responsive, ready for any uncertainty and surprises that may occur.
2. Effective Communication
A key concept is to keep our membership informed of what is going on. Currently we have a quarterly newsletter, which has been an excellent addition to providing on-going information to our membership. We also have a recently updated website which I hope all of our members utilize because of the tremendous amount of information that is available. In addition, we recently created a member list serve which will allow members to discuss in real time with other members important issues that may arise, including challenging patient cases or significant political and economic issues. An email message will be sent to you in the near future describing the list serve and how to utilize it. In the meantime, please add the email address: ACMSmember@list.mohscollege.org to your safe senders list as this will be the account that the list serve emails will generate from.
3. Education
One of the things that the ACMS does best is educate our members. Lifelong learning is key to being a competent Mohs surgeon. It is equally important for us to make sure that we also teach the next generation. Our yearly meeting is a great venue and that is why we always have a very good attendance. However, I think that we can add more educational endeavors in addition to our annual meeting. One concept would be to consider smaller regional meetings. These would be scheduled over a weekend with specific topics that allow more audience interaction and participation. Smaller meetings have the potential to be more intimate and to cultivate creative interaction.
The other areas in the realm of education would be webinars and on-line courses. In point of fact, we recently posted talks from the 2012 Mohs meeting on our website, which you may access and review. Preceptorships are also being considered with the ability to open our office to others. I certainly recall what an educational experience it was for me when I would review other fellowship training programs just to see how other Mohs surgeons ran their offices and what they did surgically. In particular, preceptorships for our younger members aligned with a more mature (hate to say "older"), established member could be an excellent combination.
Finally, it will be important to consider lining up support for eventual board certification. I know many of us were disappointed when this did not occur the first time and we ran into some political issues that prevented the support from other dermatologists. However, it is very clear to me - and most of our members - that board certification for ACGME-trained and fellowship-trained Mohs surgeons is what we need for the future success of the AMCS. I am not sure what the appropriate timing for this will be, but already we have set our sights on making sure that we work on gaining the appropriate support.
4. Promotion
We need to drive home the importance of the current skin cancer epidemic and the role of fellowship-trained Mohs surgeons as experts in the care of skin cancer. We are the best trained cutaneous oncologists and surgeons to treat skin cancers and we need to make the public aware of this as well as to educate our fellow health care colleagues. This may require a more substantial marketing effort. Marketing was looked at a number of years ago and was felt to be an expensive endeavor, but there are probably some less expensive ways to get our message across. We need to increase press coverage, so that not everything in the media is always about cosmetic dermatology. We need more press coverage about the skin cancer epidemic and how patients should be diagnosed and treated. With the recent acceptance of appropriate use criteria we can clearly market the fact that Mohs surgery is appropriate, is cost effective, and is performed most competently by fellowship-trained dermatologists.
We have started this process by adding a "Resource Page" on the mohscollege.org website, and an "In the News" page on the skincancermohssurgery.org website. Additionally, with the help of our web marketing team, we have developed a press release relating to the aforementioned topic which has been distributed to local and national media (http://www.mohscollege.org/members/resources.php). We plan to continue with this process and build on it in the coming year.
5. Advocacy
Currently we have a very active public policy committee headed by Brent Moody who is doing a terrific job. We have a lobbyist who is keeping us well-informed and appears to be responsive to our needs. It is my hope that in conjunction with our upcoming meeting in Washington, D.C. we can organize ourselves in a concerted fashion as the pre-eminent skin cancer experts to clearly make the message known about the skin cancer epidemic and the importance of dermatology and Mohs surgery.
6. Research
It is important that we continue to develop new knowledge about skin cancer epidemiology, treatment, diagnosis, and prevention, as well as the creative reconstructive and surgical techniques that we perform. We are beginning to emphasize the need for research in areas of appropriateness of Mohs surgery, cost effectiveness of Mohs surgery and the utility of Mohs surgery for select cancers. We will continue to look at potential interfacing with the Dermatology Foundation but we will strongly support on-going research for the ACMS.
7. Unity
The ACMS is a small group within a small specialty. It is important for us to continue to work with other groups, including the American Academy of Dermatology, the American Society of Dermatologic Surgery, the Association of Professors of Dermatology, as well as patient groups, and local medical and state societies. We have been very fortunate to have a number of our members serve as presidents of the AAD. Ron Moy just finished his presidency, Dan Siegel is our current president and Brett Coldiron will be our president in two years. Having those College members in that position can only help in our effort to work on a united front.
8. Member Engagement
There are a lot of very smart and talented people who are members of our College whom I have yet to meet, and I want to help you be as involved in our organization as you wish to be. I am looking for new ideas so that the ACMS will stay strong and vibrant and meaningful. There are any number of committees that our members can serve on. I am open to any ideas for new task forces or committees. I think it is very important for all members to consider in what fashion they plan to be involved in giving back to the College.
9. Leadership Development
It is important for us to begin now to train the future leaders of the ACMS. This includes supporting our younger members, providing appropriate networking capabilities, and even considering formalized mentorship programs. As the membership gets larger, it will become more and more important for us to support and engage our younger members as we prepare them to be the future leaders of the College.
10. Listen
I will do my very best to figure out what our members need and want. Specifically, what can the ACMS do to help? My goal is to ensure that our members feel that the ACMS provides value and that they are satisfied and proud to be members. I can be reached any time at (585) 737-6892. My office number is (585) 275-9208, and my e-mail is PresidentBrown@mohscollege.org. Below are our officers and board members. Please feel fee to contact any of them at any time.
Vice-president: Scott W. Fosko, MD
Secretary/Treasurer: J. Ramsey Mellette, Jr., MD
Immediate past president: Brett M. Coldiron, MD
Board of Directors:
Sumaira Z. Aasi, MD
Murad Alam, MD
John G. Albertini, MD
John A. Carucci, MD, PhD
Frederick S. Fish, III, MD
Christopher B. Harmon, MD
Gary P. Lask, MD
Tri H. Nguyen, MD
Allison T. Vidimos, MD
Have a great summer, work and play hard!
Sincerely,
Marc D. Brown, MD
President, American College of Mohs Surgery