The ACR President Joseph Flood, MD, Reviews Past Year in Rheumatology

We have been a powerful voice with CMS and with insurance companies. Our hardworking CORC members and Insurance Subcommittee members have been tireless in defending your needs and those of your patients.

The strategic plan brings together previously separate staff in practice and government affairs with those in quality of care to create important cross-pollination of creativity as these functions become more interrelated in new healthcare systems. An impressive staff works under one organizational roof now.

The ACR Executive Committee—front row: Karen Smarr, PhD, Sharad Lakhanpal, MD, MBBS, and Joan Von Feldt, MD, MS Ed; back row: Eric Matteson, MD, Joseph Flood, MD, E. William St.Clair, MD, and David Karp, MD, PhD.

Cooperation

We have witnessed unprecedented cooperation by the ACR with other organizations that have the needs of our patients at heart. This cooperation is best exemplified by our strong advocacy alliance with the Arthritis Foundation, our tireless partner in supporting and protecting patients. We also formed a coalition with other medical specialty societies to compel the federal government to recognize the unique contributions cognitive specialties (such as rheumatology) bring to patients. We also have joined voices with other specialties to push for maintenance of certification that makes sense and is evidence based.

I am proud about the progress our Affiliated Societies Council has made in bringing local and state organizations under a larger tent to cooperate on mutual goals. More than ever, it is mandatory that we all push in the same direction in Advancing Rheumatology! All organizations in rheumatology must work together. The ACR hired a new staff person just to minister to the needs of organizations at the state level, where important legislation regulating biosimilar medications and Medicaid is being made law.

The Annual Meeting

For many people, the Annual Meeting and the ACR are the same thing. “Are you going to ACR this year?” is the way we inquire about whether you will join us in Boston. The meeting is a complex undertaking to create, requiring the work of countless volunteers, ACR staff and temporary staff. In January, I attended the first two days of the Annual Meeting Planning Committee’s work. I was overwhelmed by the wealth of science we present in a compressed amount of time. I was bewildered by how this large group of people emerged from the meeting with the complicated schedule of sessions we all love. How we can meet the expectations of a wide variety of scientists and practitioners from around the globe and prevent important content from overlapping with other important content for each of these groups seems like magic to me.