AAOS, subspecialty societies maintain solidarity amid management, location changes
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
In 2018, as part of its strategic plan, the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons removed itself from the business of managing subspecialty societies.
“The academy’s purpose and mission are to serve its profession and patients, not to manage other societies,” Joseph A. Bosco III, MD, FAAOS, AAOS president and vice chair for clinical affairs in the department of orthopedic surgery at NYU Langone, told Healio Orthopedics. “Although we did, we thought that we were not the best at doing it. It was not our area of expertise, and we had no desire for it to be an area of expertise. There are a lot of companies around that can do it and probably at a less expensive rate.”
Although the business management expertise provided by the AAOS benefited the subspecialty societies, many of the subspecialty societies began to outgrow the available resources.
“Some of the smaller societies we brought up a little bit and helped them, but once they got on their own two feet, they did not need our help, frankly. They did not need us to stand in their way either,” Bosco said.
Change of management, location
About the time the AAOS made the decision to no longer provide business management services, the American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons, Hip Society and Knee Society also decided to branch out on their own, which included finding management, human resources (HR) and legal services, hiring their own employees and directing their own meetings.
To reduce costs, the ASES, Hip Society, Knee Society, Musculoskeletal Tumor Society and Ruth Jackson Orthopaedic Society collaborated and will move from AAOS headquarters in Rosemont, Illinois, to a building in Schaumburg, Illinois, in April 2021.
“If you are going to lease office space and share management services, HR services and some legal services, it is more economical to do it with a group of organizations,” Robert L. Barrack, MD, president of the Hip Society and Charles F. and Joanne Knight Professor of Orthopedic Surgery at Washington University School of Medicine, told Healio Orthopedics. “The way it panned out, there were four other organizations that had similar needs that seemed to be a good fit for [the Hip Society], and the executive directors got along and had the same view of what the needs were and how we could collaborate together.”
Learning experience
While the change has been viewed by all societies as a move in the right direction, Eric W. Carson, MD, FAAOS, FAOA, president of the J. Robert Gladden Orthopaedic Society, which completed the transition to move its office out of the AAOS headquarters in September 2020, said it led to a good but somewhat scary learning experience.
“[Being with] the academy had the benefit that they knew our agenda and our goals going forward. So, that made it easy,” Carson, professor of orthopedic surgery in the department of orthopedics at Washington University, told Healio Orthopedics.
Carson said the J. Robert Gladden Orthopaedic Society interviewed 15 management companies before partnering with Data Trace, which manages several other orthopedic organizations.
“We are still in our infancy phase of getting to know each other but, all-in-all, we have been very happy,” Carson said. “It has been a good move. We are probably going to save money.”
William N. Levine, MD, immediate past president of the ASES, said he found the experience of establishing a new management system while navigating through a pandemic to be “remarkable, because it is not the stuff that you normally think of that you are going to have to do during your presidential year.” However, he said he learned a lot about hiring an HR firm, an attorney, an accountant and the various staff needed to run an organization.
“Every one of the ASES [full-time employees] FTEs, our loyal and wonderful staff, were all academy employees and so the biggest difference is now they are ASES employees,” Levine, the Frank E. Stinchfield professor and chair in the department of orthopedic surgery at New York Presbyterian and Columbia University Medical Center, told Healio Orthopedics.
The change in business management of the subspecialty societies was also beneficial because it caused the societies to “look under the covers” and understand how to run a business, according to Barrack.
“It is probably better that you do understand those things, particularly as you get bigger and you are going to run a big meeting where there are millions of dollars changing hands with corporate sponsors and all the overhead,” Barrack said. “Would you outsource all of that and trust what filters through back to you or would it be better for you to actually run that yourself? Clearly, it is better to run it yourself.”
Relationship status
Despite the benefits and positive responses, the subspecialty societies have received with the changes in business management, Carson noted feeling detached from the AAOS.
“From our perspective, the management perspective, you feel a little detached because the people who were doing the management worked at AAOS, so you felt a little more tied in,” Carson said.
However, Levine said the academy and subspecialty societies need each other to continue to thrive. The AAOS is in danger of becoming like general surgery, a somewhat empty vessel following the defection of all the subspecialty societies, while the subspecialty societies rely on the AAOS for being the leader in patient and practice advocacy, he noted.
“The modern view, I hope personally, is of a symbiotic relationship that is respectful, that both sides have something to bring to the table and that neither side looks at it as we are the leveraging player and you are going to do what we want or we are going to do what you want,” Levine said.
As maintaining a solid relationship among the subspecialty societies is part of the AAOS’s partnership principles, Bosco noted a geographic and management change of the subspecialty societies should not change the partnership and solidarity relationship between the groups.
“We came to the realization that, in 2021, partnership and solidarity has nothing to do with co-location,” Bosco said. “We are almost in a 1980s [and] 1990s mentality where it is great if we are all in the same location. It builds partnership. To some extent that is true, but now with interconnectivity via the internet and all these other platforms, we can maintain solidarity and alignment without having to be co-located.”
Collapse
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts