Through the Lens of a Zoom Call

As with all things in 2020, NERVES was forced to cancel our beloved Annual Meeting due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Placed in Boston this year, everyone had been looking forward to connecting with other NERVES members and sponsors during the meeting, having fun after-hours in the historic city, and eating as many “lobstah rolls” as possible. Maybe the last part was just me…

It was the first time in our organization’s history there was a cause for cancellation of the Annual Meeting. There was business to be dealt with however, and the leadership called an official Business Meeting for the membership via Zoom to update the membership and to vote in our new Board of Directors. In case you missed it, we are thrilled to provide you a recap.

Jim Shea, 2019-2020 NERVES president, welcomed everyone to the call and began the meeting by reviewing our updated Mission, Vision, and Values statements.

Steve Napolitan, NERVES 2019-2020 Treasurer, gave his report and shared that the financial state of NERVES is currently strong even after the Boston meeting had been cancelled. He thanked those members who had donated their registration back to NERVES as well as the NERVES Partner, Rosman Search. Many thanks to Curi who also has dedicated their time, energy and funding to helping us find speakers for our meeting, leading to a decreased speaker expense line. Steve reported our membership has increased, leading to more revenue from that line item, making up from the decrease of our survey sales, as well as our sponsorships for the Boston meeting. Steve also thanked Jim Shea for his leadership this year and presented him with his “Zoom plaque” recognizing Jim for his service to NERVES and his outstanding leadership. Note: an official and quite nice real plaque will be mailed to Jim!

Jim Shea delivered his President’s Report where he echoed Steve’s reporting of how financially sound the NERVES organization is. He thanked the great volunteers and leaders for their work over the past year and noted several highlights from the past year including:

• 2019’s Annual Meeting in San Diego, noting the high caliber of the speakers and sponsors, as well as the wonderful attendance and participation of our membership.
• A fantastic Summer Board Meeting, leading to dedicated leaders finalizing their first mission, vision, and value statement, as well as reorganizing several committee structures (we now have 7 standing committees and one ad-hoc committee). This includes the new Education Committee, who will focus on providing virtual learning opportunities for our membership.
• Launch of the new NERVES website to enhance this resource for our membership.
• Revision to the NERVES Bylaws. 

Each committee then provided their own reports:

Annual Meeting Planning – reported by John Lewis & Steve Napolitan, Co-Chairs. 

Once we made the decision that the annual member meeting could not take place in person this year due to COVID-19, we looked at virtual options.  However, in the end, with the Board’s advice and support, we made the decision that we would not hold an annual meeting of any kind this year. Every member is extraordinarily busy in their practices during this crisis and all extra expenditures are being cut, so the best answer for this unprecedented time was a complete cancellation, which was in-line with the other industry organizations, such as AANS and CNS. 

We want to thank the annual meeting committee members, and their significant work. We had many great speakers lined up, with a really strong program. We hope much of the work will carry over to next year’s meeting. Thanks especially to Melissa Klingberg for helping to unwind with our sponsors. Our hotel and other service providers will be refunding the majority of our fees. Our lead sponsor, Curi, will transfer its sponsorship to 2021. RosmanSearch will donate its sponsorship for 2020.  We ask that each member take a moment to thank all our sponsors.  Members will have meeting fees refunded as requested, and some members have donated their 2020 registration fees to NERVES which is much appreciated. 

We are looking forward to 2021’s annual meeting in Vancouver at the Westin hotel. It is a great property and great city for the meeting.  As a reminder, it will require a passport, so be sure yours is ready.  The Annual Meeting Planning committee has been hard at work for planning 2021. We have learned that hotel space is not as plentiful as other cities, so we are having to change the meeting timeline slightly.  Instead of our normal Thursday start, we will start on Wednesday and end on Friday.  As a note, for 2022, AANS plans to change its meeting date cycle (Philadelphia, PA) from its typical Sunday through Thursday to the new cycle of Friday through Tuesday; accordingly, the NERVES Annual Planning Committee and Board of Directors are reviewing the schedule and may need to adjust the NERVES meeting dates to earlier in the week. Once we know more details, we will announce.

John and Steve again thanked Melissa K. for planning and unwinding the 2020 Boston meeting, and noted that her great talent for writing has assisted the organization tremendously. Melissa also got her 2021 Vancouver hotel scouting meeting covered for without any cost to NERVES.

Editorial – reported by Donna Bailer, Chair

Donna thanked the committee members who served on the Editorial Committee, then reminded the NERVES members of the purpose of the Editorial Committee. It oversees the development of publications for the advancement of neurosurgery practice management, primarily through its publication of the NERVES e-newsletter, the Transmitter (internal publication); and its submission of member-authored articles to media and journals to expand the general neurosurgical literature in our industry (external publications). 

A report of activities included:  July/Aug - committee duties and membership review; Nov – publication of the fall Transmitter; Jan/Feb – committee calls to work through the goals and timeline for both internal and external publications; March – publication of the spring Transmitter. The March and April committee calls have been cancelled due to COVID-19.

The Committee created a NERVES master record of the 1) historic external articles written by members, with publication names, date and links 2) current preferred external publication journals with contact information, publication parameters and schedules, and links; 3) Dates for the internal Transmitter newsletter and an outline of content information that should be included in each of the 3 issues per year.

Education – reported by Co-Chairs, Kathy Tobin & Tariq Qureshi

The Co-leaders of the newly formed Education committee recently sent out a survey to membership asking for feedback to rank the types of content that this NERVES committee should develop.  If a member has additional content ideas, please contact the co-leaders.  The frequency on education content may be quarterly, and would occur via Zoom during COVID.  Zoom should also allow more members to join these educational opportunities.

Kathy T. reminded members that AANS has free content on its website that could be helpful to our members. Members can sign on, even if not a AAMC member, to participate in this resource. Kathy asked that each member ensure our faculty are aware of this resource as well.

Marketing/Website – reported by Mary Cloninger, Chair  

Mary let membership know that the Committee updated the NERVES website this year with the help of external web designer, GliaMedia. Mary then named and thanked the committee members for their efforts.  Mary explained that the website was refreshed with an updated logo and web content, and she committed to keeping the website updated and current. Mary asked members for their feedback on the website, in particular, any items that should be added to assist the members. 

NERVES Survey – reported by Derek Cantrell, Chair

Derek thanked NERVES member Mike Radomski for his extraordinary efforts in leading the NERVES survey committee for many years. Mike and the whole committee have been dedicated to providing the most relevant information in the clearest format that NERVES could deliver over the years.

Derek then explained the history of the NERVES survey for the benefit of new NERVES members or those who have not previously participated in the survey.  The NERVES survey was one of the original reasons for the formation of NERVES, because organized neurosurgery across the US wanted a document of socio-economic benchmarks to assist with best practices by region, by type of practice, etc.

The NERVES survey is a repository of information that is kept by a third party, Katz Sapper and Miller, which holds all the discrete information reported by our members. Derek asked the members to thank Katz Sapper Miller for its hard work, including Amber Moore, with Emily Johnston assisting, who has been leading the charge for the last several years. And of course, Mike Heaton, who presents the survey information and trends at every NERVES meeting.  We will miss seeing all of them this year.

Derek then expanded on the role of the NERVES survey committee which meets in person at least 2x per year, holds many phone call/email meetings, comes up with recommendations for the survey process, develops appropriate questions, and reviews the data to enhance the survey, with ever-evolving changes each year to keep the survey the best in the industry.  Non-NERVES members can also complete the survey too FYI, although a vast majority of participants are from our NERVES membership. If a member completes the survey questions, that member will receive a free copy of the final annual survey; otherwise, the survey is for sale to non-participants.

The participation rate remains high, around 800 MDs data being reported, and in recent years, NERVES has also tried to gain more info on APP practices too.  The survey is comprehensive at 185 pages long. Many other businesses now reference the NERVES survey as the chosen benchmark for Neurosurgery socio-economic data. Since this committee is unable to meet in person today, it will be meeting virtually, and the survey should be available to complete on its regular cycle this summer.  For COVID19, the committee will discuss whether to gather any info as it relates on the next survey. If members have ideas, please send them to Derek.  A member then asked whether there could be a supplemental survey on COVID in conjunction with the AANS and CNS and Derek responded that they would look into that very good idea.  Derek then closed by giving recognition and thanks to the committee members for their hard work on the survey.

Washington Office Update – reported by Mary Cloninger

Mary let the membership know that the budget for this committee was cut, so the last in-person meeting was in July 2019.  Katie Orrico, the Director of the Washington Office of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) and Congress of Neurological Surgeons (CNS), is active in sending updates to Mary, who then sends the updates to the NERVES members.

Most recently, the information has been around COVID related government loans.  Also Katie is sending lots of information from the Washington Office quality Liaison, Rachel Groman, related to MIPS and alternative payment models (APMs), etc. There is a quality council meeting soon and Mary will report back anything that needs to be reported to NERVES membership. If the members have any questions, they should reach out to Mary.

CSNS Communication & Education Committee- Todd Barnes

To remind the membership, Todd described this CSNS committee on which he serves. The purpose of the CSNS (Council of State Neurosurgical Societies) is to provide a national forum for the State Neurosurgical Societies of the United States. This forum is primarily for discussion, consideration, and proposals of action regarding socioeconomic issues concerning neurological surgery.  The duties of the Communications and Education Committee include to develop and coordinate CSNS program presentations and publications of socioeconomic material and information through annual or special meeting programs (Practical courses, section meetings, featured speakers, special presentations or courses), professional publications (AANS Bulletin, Neurosurgery News), award programs, and public media.

As CSNS liaison, Todd meets with this committee on a regular basis, which provides insight and guidance. One important aspect of the committee is to ensure that the surveys among the various neurosurgery industry groups are coordinated rather than duplicative, etc. Normally this committee has two meetings per year. At the April meeting, which is normally in-person, but was conducted virtually this year, the committee discussed a supplemental survey to the industry around the July time-period, in conjunction with CSNS and the Washington Office liaison.  The goal would be to report that supplemental survey at the CSNS meeting in the fall.  The survey would consider not only COVID-19, but the after-effects on neurosurgery practices – how will it be different in the future?  Todd noted that whenever CSNS is doing surveys and education, NERVES is involved via the seat on this committee.  NERVES is considered a resource and an expert in what we do by this organization and its committees. If you have questions, reach out to Todd.

NERVES Long Range Planning and Strategy Committee – reported by Chair, Mary Amann

Mary noted that NERVES had hoped to include a group of external advisory council members to help keep NERVES on track with current issues.  This NERVES committee had taken steps to identify the external advisory council participants, and had planned to meet in-person with this advisory council in Boston. This will now be rescheduled, likely virtually, to keep the external advisory council members engaged this year.

Those present on the call voted on the presented Slate of the Board which was approved unanimously. Congratulations to the new 2020-2021 Board of Directors:

• President - John Lewis, Semmes-Murphey Clinic
• President Elect / Vice President - Steve Napolitan, University of Michigan, Neurosurgery
• Treasurer - John Moeller, Ascension St. Vincent Indianapolis
• Secretary - Donna Bailer, UAB Department of Neurosurgery
• Northeast Regional Director - Tariq Qureshi, Yale Neurosciences
• Southwest Regional Director - Rebecca Turner, Texas Spine & Neurosurgery Center

Also, a sincere, heartfelt thanks goes to our 2019-2020 Board:

• President - Jim Shea, Black Hills Neurosurgery & Spine
• President Elect / Vice President - John Lewis, Semmes-Murphey Clinic
• Treasurer - Steve Napolitan, University of Michigan, Neurosurgery
• Secretary - Donna Bailer, UAB Department of Neurosurgery
• Northeast Regional Director - Tariq Qureshi, Yale Neurosciences
• North / Midwest Regional Director - Kevin Hockenson, NeoSpine
• Southeast Regional Director - Kathy Tobin, Duke Medical Center
• Southwest Regional Director - Rebecca Turner, Texas Spine & Neurosurgery Center
• Immediate Past President - Mary Amann, Washington University School of Medicine - Dept. of Neurologic Surgery
• CSNS Liason - Dr. Nick Bambakidis, University Hospitals, Case Medical Center
• CSNS Liaison - Todd Barnes, University of Oklahoma Department of Neurosurgery
• CSNS Liaison - Dr. Andy Wakefield, CT Neurosurgery & Spine Associates LLC
• Education Liaison - Kathy Tobin, Duke Medical Center
• Washington Liaison - Mary Cloninger, Carolina Neurosurgery & Spine Associates PA

While we weren’t able to all be together in Boston this year, seeing everyone through the “Zoom boxes” on our screen was refreshing. Making connections and creating a support system to help us along the way is what NERVES is all about – even if it has to be done virtually!

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