March 16, 2018

Dear colleague:

Your CMS Board of Directors met today and approved a new strategic approach with overwhelming approval by members through Central Line. We took additional action on a number of critical issues and started a vital strategic discussion on what CMS should being doing next to reform our health care system. Please see my summary below and reply with any comments or suggestions. I will personally reply personally and greatly appreciate any comments.

1. New CMS Strategic Mode Will Make CMS Even More Horizontal :
We are not your predecessors’ medical society. Our governance is horizontal, not vertical. It is interactive, not linear, and it is linked directly to every CMS member. Your views are a keystroke away from a community of your peers. The new strategic model approved by the board today brings us together as an organized community of activists and advocates. The three new goals approved today ensure a real-time focus on our mission to champion health care issues that improve patient care, promote physician professional satisfaction and create healthier communities in Colorado. 

Click here to read the new CMS strategic approach.

2. Health Care Reform: Join a Strategic Discussion
Responding to undeniable membership and environmental factors, we held the first of what will be several strategic discussions to develop clearly defined projects to be launched in late 2018 and to continue through 2019. Today’s strategic discussion was framed with input from a November Central Line proposal, new Colorado data on health care costs, input from the business community and other stakeholders and, as always, the latest feedback from CMS member surveys. While the November Central Line proposal was ultimately voted down by the Board ( click here to read more), the Board did surface health care reform ideas that will be organized into a second discussion for our May board meeting. Download the following documents and convene a discussion with your medical group or with other colleagues and send your outcomes directly to me for consideration at the board’s May meeting.

Click here to read a four-page strategic discussion backgrounder
Click here to read the latest report on health care costs produced by CIVHC

3. Central Line Policy Proposals
Watch for an email very soon from your board representative requesting your input on the board decisions on following two Central Line proposals. It will only take you 30 seconds to respond whether we “got it right,” and your vote counts because our rules require reconsideration of any Central Line proposal when a majority of members disagree with a board decision. (a) New CMS mission, vision, values and goals; (c) “Intensive care” for physicians being leveraged by larger systems/organizations. 

4. Central Line Performance Review
Now in our second year, the board reviewed Central Line performance as part of an ongoing responsibility to monitor progress of governance and communications reforms enacted in 2015. The results are compelling. If you haven’t joined the more than 2,100 Colorado physicians using Central Line to date, then make a commitment to do so and follow through by clicking on the next Central Line email or text that you receive. Central Line is one part of a larger governance reform process that includes all-member surveys, regional forums and the work of councils and committees to keep CMS aware of and acting upon the physician and patient priorities in Colorado.

Click here to read Central Line performance review data

5.   Fiduciary Duties of the Board
  • Medical Student Component (MSC): An emerging voice – The board unanimously approved new MSC bylaws presented by Ms. Sofiya Durba, CU School of Medicine, Class of 2021.
  • CMS bylaws inconsistency corrected: The board discussed and took action to correct an inconsistency identified in the CMS bylaws related to ex-officio voting by the president and president-elect on CMS councils, committees and work groups. Click here to view the revised bylaws.
  • Click here to read minutes of the Jan. 19, 2018, meeting and approved council and committee appointments.

Thank you very much for taking time to read this report and for  sending me your comments .

With best regards,

M. Robert Yakely, MD, President 
Colorado Medical Society