From the
PRESIDENT
Robert A. Zaring, MD, MMM
GLMS President | [email protected]
THE END IS Where We Start
T
.S. Eliot once said “What we call the
beginning is often the end. And to
make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.” This
is my last article and signifies the end
of my year as President. However, I see it not as
an end, but a beginning of work in other facets
of the organization. It certainly marks the be-
ginning of a new and exciting year for GLMS
with new leadership. Looking back over the
year, GLMS has achieved some amazing things
due to the work of its members.
In my inauguration speech last year, I men-
tioned several strategic goals for GLMS. Those
goals were really three-pronged and consisted
of the following: to invigorate and modernize
the brand of GLMS, to bring into harmony the
GLMS Foundation and Medical Society Pro-
fessional Services (MSPS) with GLMS, expand
them both and re-engineer the CAPS program.
I am happy to say I feel we have accomplished
much of my v ision.
To begin, after the move to our new Fleur-
de-Lis Building, it seemed time to energize
and update the GLMS logo. The new logo has
been well-received and truly represents who we
are. To capitalize on the excitement generated
by our new location and logo, we increased
our outreach to young members of the soci-
ety, from the baseball game after the inaugu-
ration, to inviting medical students to use our
lobby area for meetings and to study, providing
Quills coffee daily for those who came.
A conscious decision was made to focus each
of my articles on innovation in health care,
such as new types of information technology,
dangers of innovation and opening our minds
to new health care models and economic sit-
uations. Each article focused on new ways of
looking at things in health care, placing GLMS
in front of the coming changes and establishing
the Society as a centralized place for informa-
tion. The monthly videos (DocTalks) were also
updated to take advantage of social media and
increase exposure of GLMS. Finally, to capture
the dynamics of changing ethical and social
issues in the community, the Ethical Affairs
Council (EAC) was created. This Council will
start meeting in June and will allow GLMS to
respond in a more inclusive and uniformed
voice.
As previously mentioned, the second prong
of the strategy was to more closely align the
GLMS Foundation and MSPS with GLMS
and expand both organizations’ offerings. As
the new logo demonstrates, the three parts of
GLMS should all be aligned. A business pro-
fessor of mine once said, “You can depict the
difference between a successful organization
and an unsuccessful one in one picture. The
successful one has one giant arrow pointed in
one direction and the unsuccessful one a thou-
sand arrows pointed in all different directions.”
To this point, I do believe we are becoming that
one giant arrow with everyone focusing on
the same overall goals. We have just finished a
business plan for GLMS Tech Services (oper-
ated out of MSPS) which will offer a new and
exciting service for physicians. The service is
in line with the GLMS strategic plan and offers
the potential of great growth for MSPS.
Likewise, the GLMS Foundation, under the
leadership of Dr. Reichard, has spent the last
several months working on a new strategic
plan and hired an energetic new director of the
Foundation, Ashley Cassetty. She has some ex-
citing new ideas for the Foundation. In support
of the Foundation, GLMS sponsored a video
to promote and highlight the medical mission
to Nicaragua, further linking the two organi-
zations.
The third prong of the strategy was to re-en-
gineer the Centralized Application Processing
Service (CAPS) program. The CAPS program
had become outdated and was having difficul-
ty providing the type of service stakeholders
demanded. To ameliorate these issues, Dr. Jeff
Goldberg was tasked with re-structuring the
CAPS program. Over the last year Dr. Gold-
berg along with the CAPS team, led by Jessica
Williams, have worked extremely hard to rein-
vent CAPS. The result was MedCentral. Like
all new endeavors, there are always problems.
The team, with approval of the GLMS executive
officers, decided to buy our new credentialing
software from Cactus. The brand is well-known
and feature rich. However, after initial instal-
lation there were significant issues that arose.
Some were related to the software and some
from a need to change the culture of physicians
and hospital staff offices in their approach to
credentialing. The MedCentral team worked
tirelessly to overcome the obstacles and still
get the work done. Through collaboration with
Cactus, the MedCentral team, physicians and
hospitals, the service is turning the corner. We
are starting to have routine group meetings of
all the stakeholders to continuously improve
the service. MedCentral now offers almost all
its functionality online making the user experi-
ence far easier and delivering completed work
without redoes, making it easier on hospital
staff and credentialing offices.
As you can tell, I am proud of the work
GLMS has done over the year and you should
be too. So many GLMS members and staff have
given so much of their time, treasure and bril-
liance and I want to thank you all. Working
with such incredibly dedicated, hardworking
and gifted staff at GLMS and getting to meet so
many incredible physicians in the community
has been very rewarding. The Greater Louis-
ville community is truly blessed to have all of
you as its members.
In closing, I only want to say thank you all
for making this year so special to me and in the
words of Winnie the Pooh, “How lucky I am to
have something that makes saying goodbye so
hard.”
Dr. Zaring is an anatomic and clinical pathologist
with Louisville Pathology Associates and practices
at Jewish Hospital.
MAY 2018
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