Dr. Snow recapped a few important achievements through his tenure as CORC chair that he is especially proud of.
Changing the Way CORC Members Work Together
Stepping into his role as CORC chair in 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic presented challenges that Dr. Snow was able to turn into opportunities. “Sometimes,” he notes, “you choose the moment to make changes, and other times the moment chooses you. In this case, it was mainly the latter.”
One simple but meaningful change for committee work came about because members were not able to meet in-person during COVID, and lengthy virtual meetings were challenging to schedule after a long workday. So, Dr. Snow transitioned CORC to hour-long meetings, held on the same day and time each month. “We found a way to get our work done in that time frame, and I think it has been very successful because it allowed for issues to be discussed at multiple meetings. This allowed the group to think about the topics in between meetings and allowed anyone who missed one meeting to still contribute at the next meeting.”
An even bigger benefit of more regular meetings was that they offered more opportunities to “be better in tune with the ‘environment’ of the practice of rheumatology at the granular level, where patients were being seen day in and day out,” he shares.
Improving Practice Support for Membership
CORC’s number one task is to address the economic, technical and ethical issues that bear on the practice of rheumatology. During Dr. Snow’s tenure as chair, the committee was able to evolve and come out better equipped to serve in this role for the College. For example, CORC worked to provide members with educational and patient-specific materials to help their practices in ways the committee had not in the past, he says. “We produced webinars, developed a variety of clinically important printed documents that were updated frequently and helped create other multimedia related to the biosimilar wave that is hitting now.”
Another important role of CORC is to produce and update position statements for the ACR on issues affecting the practice of rheumatology. The committee has worked hard to keep them updated and in line with how the specialty is practiced, Dr. Snow adds. “The change during my term to monthly meetings allowed us to give timely feedback to the Board of Directors on position statements and other various topics, as well as help the ACR as a whole be more aware of threats to the practice of rheumatology.”
