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Strategy for Success
SONOGRAPHERS’ COMMUNICATION Strategy for Success 6. ASE will increase its resources and will develop and nurture a governance and administrative structure that best enables the organization to meet its strategic goals and serve its members.
Rick Rigling, BS, RDCS, FASE Chair of the Council on Cardiac Sonography To win the World Series in baseball, the Superbowl in football, or to even bring a life-saving drug to market, there must be a cohesive team with strategies to achieve goals. The team needs to include members from different disciplines with parallel motivations. By working together, goals and strategies are developed with a similar focus and plan for achievement. This past spring and early summer, ASE volunteer members set out as a team to strategically plan for the continued success of the largest subspecialty professional organization in cardiovascular medicine, The American Society of Echocardiography. The team of sonographers, physicians, and dedicated staff members met to review the core values of the organization. They established the following five core values that define ASE: quality, patient-centered, leading, innovative, and proactive. The affirmation of these values enabled the team to develop goals to strive to achieve over the next 3 years, which will lead the organization to further success. After substantial discussion, the following six goals where established: 1. ASE will be the voice of cardiovascular ultrasound, building its membership to lead a growing, dynamic community of practice. 2. ASE will be the primary resource for meeting the evolving needs of its members through education, training, information exchange, and professional development. 3. ASE will champion public policy and payer advocacy, creating an environment for excellence in the quality and practice of cardiovascular ultrasound. 4. ASE will be widely recognized as the source of information on cardiovascular ultrasound and will lead its integration into clinical decision making in order to optimize patient care. 5. ASE will foster, promote, and accelerate innovation and research in cardiovascular ultrasound.
Volume 18 Number 9
How to accomplish these six goals and how to measure success was the team’s next challenge. Strategic plans and action steps for each goal, along with benchmarks for success were extensively developed by the team and approved by the board of directors at the June 14th meeting. As sonographers involved in this process, we kept probing and asking what the strategy and outcome will mean for us. We wondered if the process would make our role more stable or change it drastically. The deeper into the strategic planning process we delved, the more we started to understand the process was not one that would affect sonographers, but rather it would allow us as sonographers to further refine and define our profession as well as allow us to contribute to the success of our profession much more than we had in the past. Action plans will address needs of sonographers in establishing, maintaining, and growing their knowledge base. The plans call for the development of educational products to assist sonographers in getting credentialed and for the further development of courses designed to specifically increase sonographers’ knowledge base as the world of cardiovascular medicine becomes more technically complex. Along with this development will be an increased reliance on ASE CEU credits for sonographers and publicizing the ability to utilize these CEUs toward maintenance of credentialing and accreditation. Following in the idea of assisting sonographers in gaining knowledge and credentialing, other action plans will support efforts to publicly acknowledge the link between the quality acquisition and payment for quality diagnostic, and now, therapeutic assistive procedures. There will be efforts to make sonographers more aware of the threats of reimbursement changes and to directly involve them in stating their case for cardiovascular ultrasound being performed by qualified personnel in a team of qualified experts. The new ASE president, Bijoy K. Khandheria, MBBS, in his incoming President’s Address at the 16th Annual Scientific Sessions in Boston highlighted the uniqueness of the team structure within cardiovascular ultrasound. As Dr. Khandheria described, the traditional sonographer and physician are now a part of a larger growing team of nurses and other imaging specialists. This team has a challenge ahead to develop and learn the new technologies to fit into a medical industry that is being squeezed for payment for only those procedures that are performed in a quality setting by appropriately qualified professionals, thereby adding value to the patient outcome. Sonographers will continue to participate in the ASE’s goals to maintain the core values of cardiovascular ultrasound. They will lead the team in assisting new sonographers and physicians in raising their knowledge base and becoming qualified members to carry out the successful future goals of an organization which values the uniqueness of each group of professionals on the team.
Journal of the American Society of Echocardiography 27A
Rick Rigling, BS, RDCS, FASE Chair of the Council on Cardiac Sonography To win the World Series in baseball, the Superbowl in football, or to even bring a life-saving drug to market, there must be a cohesive team with strategies to achieve goals. The team needs to include members from different disciplines with parallel motivations. By working together, goals and strategies are developed with a similar focus and plan for achievement. This past spring and early summer, ASE volunteer members set out as a team to strategically plan for the continued success of the largest subspecialty professional organization in cardiovascular medicine, The American Society of Echocardiography. The team of sonographers, physicians, and dedicated staff members met to review the core values of the organization. They established the following five core values that define ASE: quality, patient-centered, leading, innovative, and proactive. The affirmation of these values enabled the team to develop goals to strive to achieve over the next 3 years, which will lead the organization to further success. After substantial discussion, the following six goals where established: 1. ASE will be the voice of cardiovascular ultrasound, building its membership to lead a growing, dynamic community of practice. 2. ASE will be the primary resource for meeting the evolving needs of its members through education, training, information exchange, and professional development. 3. ASE will champion public policy and payer advocacy, creating an environment for excellence in the quality and practice of cardiovascular ultrasound. 4. ASE will be widely recognized as the source of information on cardiovascular ultrasound and will lead its integration into clinical decision making in order to optimize patient care. 5. ASE will foster, promote, and accelerate innovation and research in cardiovascular ultrasound.
Volume 18 Number 9
How to accomplish these six goals and how to measure success was the team’s next challenge. Strategic plans and action steps for each goal, along with benchmarks for success were extensively developed by the team and approved by the board of directors at the June 14th meeting. As sonographers involved in this process, we kept probing and asking what the strategy and outcome will mean for us. We wondered if the process would make our role more stable or change it drastically. The deeper into the strategic planning process we delved, the more we started to understand the process was not one that would affect sonographers, but rather it would allow us as sonographers to further refine and define our profession as well as allow us to contribute to the success of our profession much more than we had in the past. Action plans will address needs of sonographers in establishing, maintaining, and growing their knowledge base. The plans call for the development of educational products to assist sonographers in getting credentialed and for the further development of courses designed to specifically increase sonographers’ knowledge base as the world of cardiovascular medicine becomes more technically complex. Along with this development will be an increased reliance on ASE CEU credits for sonographers and publicizing the ability to utilize these CEUs toward maintenance of credentialing and accreditation. Following in the idea of assisting sonographers in gaining knowledge and credentialing, other action plans will support efforts to publicly acknowledge the link between the quality acquisition and payment for quality diagnostic, and now, therapeutic assistive procedures. There will be efforts to make sonographers more aware of the threats of reimbursement changes and to directly involve them in stating their case for cardiovascular ultrasound being performed by qualified personnel in a team of qualified experts. The new ASE president, Bijoy K. Khandheria, MBBS, in his incoming President’s Address at the 16th Annual Scientific Sessions in Boston highlighted the uniqueness of the team structure within cardiovascular ultrasound. As Dr. Khandheria described, the traditional sonographer and physician are now a part of a larger growing team of nurses and other imaging specialists. This team has a challenge ahead to develop and learn the new technologies to fit into a medical industry that is being squeezed for payment for only those procedures that are performed in a quality setting by appropriately qualified professionals, thereby adding value to the patient outcome. Sonographers will continue to participate in the ASE’s goals to maintain the core values of cardiovascular ultrasound. They will lead the team in assisting new sonographers and physicians in raising their knowledge base and becoming qualified members to carry out the successful future goals of an organization which values the uniqueness of each group of professionals on the team.
Journal of the American Society of Echocardiography 27A