Minutes of a Conference Call Meeting
of the SMA Coordinating and
Advisory Committees on Leadership
June 21, 2012 – 6:00 pm CDT
A conference call meeting of the Coordinating and Advisory Committees on Leadership
was held on Thursday, June 21, 2012 at 6:00 pm CT / 7:00 pm ET.
Roll Call
Committee members present were: Mrs. Nancy Brant; Stuart Goodman, MD; Mrs.
Myrna Goodman; Mason P. Jett, MD; and Scott W. Yates, MD. Also present were Mark S.
Williams, Program Chair for the SMA Healthcare Summit, and Michael C. Gosney, MD, SMA
President. SMA Staff present were Luke Hartsfield, Kathy McLendon, Jennifer Price, Kendra
Blackmon, Nancy Mullins, Vonette Scott, and Mandy Stone.
Update on 2012 Healthcare Summit
Dr. Williams reviewed the goal of the 2012 Healthcare Summit taking place November
16-17, in Nashville, Tennessee, which is to provide a well-rounded educational session of the
future vision of health care. He stated he is very pleased with the final panel of distinguished
faculty, which should attract and appeal to a wide range of physicians and healthcare
professionals and presented an overview of the key speakers, adding that expanded bios are
available at http://sma.org/summit/faculty:
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Thomas Bartrum, attorney from Baker Donelson, one of the largest health law firms in
the country with an office in Nashville. Mr. Bartrum is an expert in the Accountable Care
Organization model.
Helen Darling represents the most influential business group when it comes to healthcare
policy at a national level. The National Business Group represents 300 of the largest
employers in the U.S. and does a lot of work examining health care and performance.
Paul Grundy, MD is known as the “Father of the Patient-Centered Medical Home
model.” He is the Global Director of IBM Healthcare Transformation.
Marty Kohn, MD, Chief Medical Scientist for Care Delivery Systems in IBM Research,
will speak on data analysis, specifically the role of “Watson” the supercomputer, which
recently won a Jeopardy match contest. This supercomputer has been hired by WellPoint
for 37 Blue Cross organizations to help analyze best evidence-based medicine.
J. Edward Hill, MD is well-known to SMA as a dynamic leader, serving as AMA and
SMA President and Past Chair of the World Medical Association.
Gary Kaplan, MD is the Chairman and CEO of Virginia Mason Health System. He is
world-famous for leading Virginia Mason to transform itself by adopting a new model of
health care and payment resulting in a highly successful healthcare system and model.
James Pichert, PhD is Co–director of the Center for Professional Advocacy at
Vanderbilt. He and his partner, Jerry Hixson, have done great research in terms of how
physician behavior and physician interaction can reduce medical malpractice events.
Pamela Riley, MD and Cathy Schoen, Senior VP for Policy, Research and Evaluation for
The Commonwealth Fund will talk about population health.
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Lori Schutte, President of Cejka Search, one of the largest physician search firms in the
country, will provide insight on the look of the new physician, expectations and trends in
future.
Stan Starnes, Esq. is a lawyer and CEO of ProAssurance, the third largest medical
malpractice company in the United States. Mr. Starnes is involved in unique projects with
physicians to lower rates of harm while also lowering the rates of malpractice insurance.
Grace-Marie Turner is President of the Galen Institute, a public policy research
organization for informed debate on health reform. She will provide a conservative
perspective on health care and reform.
Leonard Zwelling, MD, professor at MD Anderson and past Robert Wood Johnson
Health Policy Fellow will give the liberal perspective on the state of healthcare reform.
Dr. Williams explained the direction of the summit is to provide the information to
educate doctors who can then form their own political opinions rather than to express particular
political perspectives. The meeting is primarily non-political with speakers who are all experts in
their respective areas of healthcare, and our goal is to educate as to what is going on in the
respective fields and how the issues might influence physicians and health care. The meeting is
essentially designed to be neutral in position, but visionary.
Kathy McLendon addressed sponsorship opportunities available for the meeting, adding
that full information is available on the website and a brochure is downloadable at
http://sma.org/summit/sponsor.
Kendra Blackmon explained the target audience includes not only physicians but other
stakeholders including hospital administrators, human resource directors, healthcare law, and
more. Marketing campaigns are already underway. It was also suggested that SMA market the
meeting to the American Nurses Association, the American Academy of Physician Assistants,
the Christian Dental Association and the Catholic Health Organization.
Jennifer Price outlined how the media will be contacted to assist with promotion before
and after the meeting. In Tennessee and Georgia, local newspapers, television stations, radio
stations, and other media outlets are being contacted to garner additional marketing. The
Tennessee Press Association has been contacted, and press releases will continue throughout the
year. Through the SMA Journal, reciprocal banner ads with publications related to health care
and trends in medicine, are being negotiated through its publisher, Lippincott. There is a media
center as well on the Summit website at http://sma.org/summit/media-center.
Dr. Gosney announced his agreement on the timeliness of the meeting, the impressive
faculty and the importance of the topics to be discussed, and invited everyone on the call to
attend. He also invited anyone interested to join him and Dr. Williams in participating in SMA’s
CME Rafting trip taking place in September on Idaho’s Middle Fork Salmon River Canyon.
Adjournment
There being no further business to come before the committee, the meeting was adjourned
at 6:35 pm CDT.