REPORTS TO: / Board of Directors
REPORT OF: / Executive Vice President
SUBMITTED FOR: / 2017 Annual Board Report
PREPARED BY: / Jim Flanigan, CAE
DATE: / 7/3/2017
Systems:
  • Learning Management System:Since launch in the fall of 2016, we have had 739 users of some element of the system. There are currently 49 courses that are live or are in the process of being re-authored from the old CACMLE LMS. In addition, ASCLS will likely host 13 live webinars during 2017, including the Grand Rounds in Microbiology series. Educators were one group that extensively used the old CACMLE system. We anticipate new features scheduled to rollout later this year will be helpful to serving that group of customers.
  • Member Management: The Timberlake System continues to function well. Timberlake is evolving to allow for easy and seamless integration with best-in-class third party applications for broadcast email, virtual storefronts, and other services that the staff is looking forward to exploring. We anticipate that this will be a significant improvement to the system.
  • Connect.ASCLS.org: Traffic to the ASCLS Connect site continues to grow and committees are utilizing the platform effectively. In addition to new tools we anticipate rolling out in the next few months around collaboration, sharing of documents and group editing of documents, the platform has a number of existing tools that we are just now beginning to understand. One of those tools can be put to use for onboarding new ASCLS members. One line of discussion at Planning Day in March was making sure our onboarding of new members was such that we increase our overall retention. We are working on a series of 6-7 automated and personalized emails that will be sent to each new member at weekly intervals when they join the Society.
  • Volunteer Opportunities Module:The new module was utilized successfullyduring the volunteer appointment process for the next association year. Utilizing the system for regional and even state opportunities is planned for the coming year.
  • Communications:ASCLS Today’selectronic version has launched as well as a new structure for storing ASCLS Today stories on the website. The newsletter now has a permanent home on the ASCLS website where individual articles or the entire edition can be shared more easily via email or social media. All submitted content will be published in electronic and printed formats as our backlog is published.
Based on our website data, social media platforms are supplying a growing percentage of traffic and interest in ASCLS programs. Along with broadcast emails, the platforms allow for us to reach audiences we would otherwise miss, target relatively inexpensive advertising campaigns, and gather feedback from our audiences on programs themselves. In late June, when ASCLS passed 15,000 people liking our Facebook page, it was a milestone for growth. In just a few short years, the Facebook audiencehas grown by 50%.
  • Migration of Journal to New Platform:The transition to the Highwire platform for Clinical Laboratory Sciencehas begun with planning for the build-out of the new journal and abstract submission platforms and mapping out the timeline for transition. Launch is anticipated during Fall 2017.

Strategy:
  • Government Affairs:It has been a challenging Spring and early Summer in Washington. The intentional disruption within agencies has commenced. This has created difficulties in trying to predict how key, regulatory issues will play out.There is growing pessimism that CMS will agree to delay implementation of the PAMA law despite the requests of the entire laboratory community. ASCLS and other laboratory groups recognize that the key challenge is the law itself, which limits any improvements that could be undertaken at the administrative level. ASCLS and others have raised concern with CMS for the last year that the applicable laboratory definition used by CMS is excluding significant portions of the market that are likely to include the highest private payor rates. CMS has essentially said, “that’s not a bug, that’s a feature.”
The laboratory community now waits to see what CMS decides. The agency claims that half of all independent labs and 95% physicians labs are excluded from reporting, but they estimate those physician laboratories and independent laboratories for which applicable information must be reported account for 92 percent of CLFS spending on physician office laboratories and more than 99 percent of CLFS spending on independent laboratories.The HHS OIG reported last September that labs required to report their data are projected to be just five percent of all labs, but cover 69 percent of Medicare payments (based on 2015 data).
We will continue to monitor and be engaged in conversations with the rest of the laboratory community, but we may have to make a legislative push in the fall, once CMS has published the proposed rates and the weighted medians drawn from the data.
  • Membership:Overall, membership remained strong this year. Paradoxically, while the total number of individuals is down about 5% compared to last year (all of that loss in Professional II and Student categories), membership dues revenue will end the year up 2.3%.
With the Society’s current membership management system, we are able to properly enforce the ASCLS policy that allows for pro-ration of dues for newly joining members, but charges those who were members the previous year the amount of their renewal and maintains their join date. Renewals are not pro-rated in the same way new members joining.
Pricing and packages for managers and educators were tweaked to generate more revenue and align value to cost. This has resulted in greater utilization.
Changes were also made to the incentive ASCLS provides to each person who passes the Board of Certification MLS or MLT exam. In the past, ASCLS provided a free membership incentive. This led to some dissatisfaction among those who were already members. As an alternative, ASCLS now provides a 50% off coupon that can be used to join or renew membership at the next renewal cycle. The number of New Professional members this year is almost exactly the same as last year.
  • Strengthening Constituent Groups: The process of determining the winners of the membership awards this year provided some interesting data when comparing the winners to those constituent groups with less success. There were significant, and sometimes dramatic differences, between constituent groups. This is just one example of how strengths of the constituent organizations directly impact the strength of the national organization. One new initiative to address this concerns is the Constituent Leader Institute.
Arising from the board’s discussions at Planning Day in March about how to perform orientation more effectively, the Institute will be a hybrid online/live constituent leader education program that seeks to efficiently deliver critical, tactical information and provide a dynamic environment for networking and peer-to-peer learning.
The live Presidents-Elect Orientation will be changed to the “Constituent Leader Symposium,” a live, peer-to-peer learning experience open to all current and future constituent society leaders. All constituent leaders will be invited to participate and also complete a series of online modules that focus on general administrative subjects and orientation to ASCLS structure and strategy as well as general principals and best practices on key subjects like meeting/education planning, membership recruitment, and marketing and communication. In addition to the presentations, references and other tools will be provided within the modules. Those references and other tools will also be stored in the ASCLS Connect Resource Libraries.
  • Annual Meeting/Education:As we transfer the remaining courses hosted on the old CACMLE system to the ASCLS LMS, focus is changing to new, ASCLS-developed content. Interest in virtual learning is growing and allows ASCLS to reach a much broader audience than it can reach with live events alone. At this year’s annual meeting, we will be experimenting with two ways to extend the live experience to a virtual audience. We will attempt to broadcast the opening general session live on Facebook. We will also be recording of all our annual meeting presentations in sync with the slides so they can be made available later, through the LMS, to the thousands of members and non-member laboratorians unable to attend the meeting. We are overcoming some technical/cost obstacles, but I’m fairly positive we will be able to pull it off this year.
  • Business Opportunities: With the dissolution of Advance Publishing earlier this year, several new business opportunities have presented themselves. One of those is a need within industry to train laboratorians on technical issues. BD sponsored the first of what is hoped will be a series of webcasts. The webinar focusing on chromogenic media attracted nearly 500 registrants.

Activities:
  • Staff retreats:Staff extended their stay in March after the Planning Day/Legislative Conference for meetings Neosystems in McLean, Virginia. The meeting allowed us to quickly address the items identified at Planning Day, and is part of our effort to ensure we spend planning time face-to-face at least twice a year. The next staff retreat will occur following the AMSC/Executive Committee meeting in Chicago in September.
  • CLEC: The Society’s Clinical Laboratory Educators Conference was a tremendous success. Attendance was near historic highs, and initial feedback, both qualitative and quantitative, are very strong. The educational content was exceptional and financial performance should outperform the budget. The local host committee did a wonderful job with the event.
  • Minnesota, Colorado, Iowa and Michigan, and Region VIII and V Meetings:I was honored to participate as a speaker at regional meetings in the fall and at state ASCLS meeting in the spring. During “Disruptive Belief: Memes, Mission, and the Mythos of the Slimy Salesman” I was able to share some thoughts on how laboratorians can control their own futures. Having time to meet and talk with our members has been invaluable.
  • Legislative Symposium: Attendance at this year’s legislative symposium is stronger this year than in 2016. This may be attributed to the high profile of the recent election. We are contracted to use the Hilton in Old Town Alexandria through 2018, but that may limit capacity. Discussions have already begun in potential sites beginning in 2019 as well as creative ways we may be able to utilize the available space in 2018 to accommodate more attendees.
  • Lab Tests Online: The ASCLS Consumer Response Team is a key element of the Lab Tests Online website. ASCLS also has editorial input with AACC on the website. Last year, the site averaged more than 3.6 million visitors a month sought out information on laboratory testing with a significant international reach.
  • Government Relations: Throughout the last year, ASCLS has had a number of opportunities to represent laboratorians with federal agencies, lawmakers and their staffs.
CMS: ASCLS participated in a meeting with CMS-CLIA staff on the personnel regulations arising from the April 1, 2016 memo equating a nursing degree with a biological sciences degree, making nurses eligible to perform high complexity testing and to supervise labs. In addition, we have been engaged with the CLFS advisory committee meetings as CMS implements PAMA.
In late October, 2016 ASCLS met with the American Nurses Association (ANA) and House Ways and Means Committee staff. In the case of ANA, we found potential allies on the CMS personnel regulations as well as the proposed rule from the VA to which ASCLS successfully objected. Discussion with House Ways and Means committee staff regarding PAMA was equally as positive.
CLIAC: The fall 2016 CLIAC meeting recently concluded. Karen W. Dyer, MT(ASCP), DLM, Director, Division of Laboratory Services, acknowledged ASCLS’s concerns about the nursing personnel regulation and expressed publicly, what she has expressed privately, that the long-term solution is to look at the entire personnel regulations and modernize them. The spring 2017 CLIAC meeting was cancelled due to the federal hiring freeze in place at the time.
CDC: In June, 2017, I represented ASCLS, along with other clinical laboratory and public health laboratory organizations in a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Division of Laboratory Systems (DLS) convened meeting to strengthen relationships and communications for laboratory emergency preparedness and response.At this strategic partnership meeting, participants initiated discussions on the importance of public-private partnerships among the laboratory community, the significance of just-in-time communication from CDC’s Laboratory Outreach Communication System (LOCS), the challenges of standardized electronic reporting of results, and the needs of the clinical laboratories for enhancing biosafety.
  • Meeting with other Lab Groups: Significant amounts of time have been spent this Spring coordinating with other laboratory organizations both within formal partnerships (like the Board of Certification) and informally on areas of mutual interest like federal legislation and regulation.

Items of Concern: None
Request for Action:None