MACVPR Business Meeting
January 6th, 2018
Baltimore Washington Medical Center
In attendance: Debra Lund, Emily Davis, Cecily Ludka, Terri Pilli, Mary Beth Linthicum, Tom Pagano.
Teleconference-- Tina Miller, Stacey Blank, Michele Burton, Terri Mapp, Courtney Cline
The meeting was called to order at 9:53
Treasurer’s Report
Mary Beth reported we have $20,023 in the account. Six members have paid dues online so far. Please pay dues online at or mail check to Mary Beth (e-mail Emily for address to mail check). The $30 dues cover the fall dinner meeting and a discounted rate for Spring Conference.
Teleconference
We had success with first meeting today using dial-in option. 5 out of the 11 members dialed in for today’s meeting. Please remember to mute if you are using speakerphone with lots of background noise. We will continue to offer this feature at next meetings.
Google Docs/Membership/Constitution
Emily e-mailed members who did not pay dues since 2016 to reconnect them with MACVPR. There were 10+ non-deliverable e-mail addresses, so if you know of any prior members who may have changed contact info- please send their info to Emily. We discussed other strategies to reach out to non-members. As a long-term goal, once more planning is completed for the Spring Conference, we want to reach out to programs and potentially e-mail the program list asking for updates to contact info, etc.
Leadership 2018
Per the constitution, the Board members are nominated in January, voted on at March meeting, and the term begins in June.
Current leadership:
President – Stacey Blank, BTPS, RRT
Vice President – Tom Pagano, MS
Treasurer – Mary Beth Linthicum, RT, RN
Secretary – Emily Davis, MS, RCEP, CCRP
Tom will move to president in June and there is an opening for Vice President. Courtney Cline was nominated for VP and accepted the nomination. Voting will take place at the March meeting.
Pulmonary Rehab Certificate
AARC & AACVPR have developed the Pulmonary Rehabilitation Certificate. Now available online, the course has 12 video modules assessing mastery in the practice of pulmonary rehab. Cost is $230 for AACVPR members and $280 for non-members. Successful completion provides 12 AACVPR, CRCE/AARC, and pending nursing CNE credits. Stacey has registered for the Pulmonary Rehab Certificate.
Please view the website for more info:
This was developed as the sister certification to the CCRP – Certified Cardiac Rehab Professional exam (which is now available to take on the computer at Pearson Vue testing centers).
AACVPR News and Views
AACVPR’s News and Views 2018 is transitioning to a content hub publication and would like input from affiliate groups on what we are doing to “promote professional growth and development”. Each issue will have a different focus and affiliate leaders will be emailed questions.February issue:
What is our affiliate doing for CR week?
What are key issues our affiliate is addressing related to the delivery of CR?
What is our affiliate doing to help programs grow/develop/diversify?
What is our affiliate doing to promote collaboration within our affiliate?
We started a discussion on how does MACVPR want to handle these issues, as we are currently focusing on individual issues/needs. Tom suggested we could put these items on the meeting agenda to discuss. Alternatively, we could do a blog post on the website with the questions from AACVPR and members could comment with responses. A firm conclusion was not made on the topic as we moved to discussing different topics on what programs are doing.
In terms of CR week- no one had specific plans yet; Debbie mentioned how it is a lot of work to get a cardiac rehab week proclamation, but it is great for program promotion and awareness. BWMC recently participated in a Facebook Live event though the hospital’s public relations department where staff and a patient were interviewed. The video on Facebook has thousands of views. Carroll Hospital participates in a local radio series called Health Chat. We realized programs are probably participating in more projects/outreach than we first realized, so this could be useful to examine these larger scale questions from AACVPR. We just need to decide how to best deliver the information and compile it, be it via website blog posts or at the business meetings.
Day on the Hill
DOTH will take place March 5-6th, 2018. Debbie Lund reported it is the same issue on using physician extenders as the supervising physician for CR. The goal is to have 5-6 people attend with likely 9-10 representatives to visit total. If you are interested in participating, please email Debbie at . So far Debbie, Stacey, Tom, Cecily, and Terri are interested in attending this year’s DOTH.
Joint Affiliate Membership
Andrew Miller, Membership Senior Coordinator for AACVPR phoned in to the meeting to discuss joint affiliation between MACVPR and AACVPR. He reviewed the overall concept and answered questions about the topic. Joint affiliation is a membership sharing program for the national and local programs. It costs $215 to join and that is dues for MACVPR and AACVPR with the educational advantage program. Reimbursement back to MACVPR is 2-3 times per year and the affiliate program receives 13.5% (which is similar to the cost of our annual dues now).
MACVPR is in the preliminary/information gathering stage of the process and the next step is for officers to follow up with Andrew about current membership numbers. The vision of joint affiliation is to create a larger network of people connected and help disseminate information. Joint affiliation is part of AACVPR’s strategic plan and they want feedback on how to improve their services. Andrew reports that AACVPR does not intercede in day-to-day operations of MACVPR but can offer website alternatives as an option to be added on later. There are 18 joint affiliates so far, and although an initial membership drop does occur, most programs see a return in membership over time.
Tom asked how many AACVPR members there are in Maryland versus how many MACVPR members. Andrew discussed how the next step would be to give our member list to them to cross reference this information. Andrew did report there are 52 members of AACVPR who live in Maryland.
Debbie asked if more people attend local meetings if they are joint affiliate members, as an issue of MACVPR is to get the ~75 members involved at the local level. Andrew reported that joint affiliate would provide unique network opportunities and has a vision to create a larger network of people to disseminate information, provide education and provide opportunities for state leaders.
After Andrew left the phone call we continued to discuss the pros/cons to MACVPR. The group feels there are limited benefits to joint affiliation and we want to keep costs low to local members who don’t get financial support from their hospitals for membership. The officers are going to participate in the preliminary investigation and continue to get more information. We want to do a survey with members and get more insight from those members not at the meetings. Emily will research how to do surveymonkey (is it free?) and explore options for surveying members.
Spring Conference Planning
AV guy Dwayne is good to go.Dwayne E. Scott, Media Services Coordinator at Northwest
Debbie to be vendor liaison and coordinate that.
Tom to be speaker liaison and get AACVPR credits. See if Lisa has forms/timelines.
Stacey to get AARC credits
Emily to make brochure once we have speakers confirmed
Mary Beth to check on cost of speaker honorarium.
In follow-up e-mail after the meeting Mary Beth confirmed speaker honorarium has been $400 and we have paid for some travel expenses for speakers from out of state.
Potential speakers:
Debbie to reach out to: Kerry – vascular, Cardiac Yoga, Lung transplant team
Tom to reach out to behavior change counselor for talk on behavior change/depression
Michele to reach out to acupuncturist on smoking cessation. Depends on funding? Stacey may also have good person for smoking cessation.
Please remember to cc Tom on emails about speakers so he can stay in the loop. Those helping coordinate conference will have e-mail communication and potentially a tele-meetingto follow up.
The meeting was adjourned at 11:23 am. The next meeting will be Tuesday March 13th at BWMC at 9:30 in the First Floor Tate Conference Room.
Submitted by Emily Davis, MS, RCEP, CCRP
MACVPR Secretary