03 Executive Summary
by Michele Marcum, CHFP, Past President FY 03
I would like to thank all of you for a great year. It feels a little strange being the “past president” no longer ultimately responsible for operational tasks and deadlines. We had a very successful year, achieving many of our goals identified in the Strategic Plan. The following executive summary of the past year is my last official duty as the FY 03 Idaho Chapter President.
The Idaho Chapter received three awards from National HFMA for our achievements in FY 2003. We received the “Hottom Gold Award” for Educational Performance Improvement and the “Silver Award of Excellence” for Education. I thank Ron Gleason, our Pres-Elect/Program Chair in FY 03, for leading us to achieve these education awards. Bringing relevant, quality education to our healthcare community is what we are all about. We were also awarded the “Gold Award of Excellence” for Certification with one newly certified member and two qualifying members.
I want to thank Ken Law for coordinating the Membership Survey, which is one of the indicators of our Chapter’s performance, along with the quarterly meeting evaluations. Even with the incentive of a $50 gift certificate for returning your survey, the number of responses was very low, 12% of our membership. I will take that as an indication that our membership is not driven by money. The feedback we did receive was very positive and I will interpret the non-respondents as indicating that no news is good news. The results are summarized as follows. More complete information can be found in the FY 03-04 Strategic Plan, which can be found on our chapter web site: www.idahohfma.org or you may request a hardcopy from any board member.
Educational Opportunities
Our goal as the Chapter leadership is to continue to provide quality educational programming that is considered of high value by our membership. To ensure this continuation of quality education, the Chapter leadership will utilize the survey results and the quarterly program evaluations, which indicate topics that are the highest level of interest to our membership.
The topics ranked most important to our membership are Government Regulations and Financial Management. Eighty-nine (89%) ranked chapter performance as “very good” or “good” in the Government Regulation category. Chapter performance ratings for Financial Management education as “very good” or “good” by eighty percent (80%).
Participation
Networking and Interaction is also an important part of service to our membership. Chapter service was ranked as “very good” and “good” by only forty percent (40%). Thirty-three percent (33%) feel input and involvement in chapter operations is “very important” with forty percent (40%) rating it as “important.” However, six percent (6%) felt the chapter performance in this area was “very good” with fifty-three percent (53%) ranking it as “good.”This indicates there an opportunity for improvement in this area. We need to find more ways to motivate our members to become more personally involved in the chapter.
Chapter Communications
The survey again demonstrated that the membership values the Chapter newsletter, the GemStatement, with a chapter service rating of “very good” by forty-seven percent (47%) and “good” by forty percent (40%).
Our Chapter Membership Directory continues to be valuable to our members as well. Eighty percent (80%) ranked it “very important” and an additional thirteen percent (13%) ranked it “important.”
A major new accomplishment in FY 03 was the establishment of our own chapter web site, www.idahohfma.org. We owe this to the efforts of Calvin Carey who will be maintaining the web site for us and Ron Gleason, who initiated the project over a year ago.
Other Chapter Operations
The responses to the locations and social activities for our quarterly education programs indicate this is also an important part of our service to our chapter. We have tried some new locations and activities in the FY02 and 03 years and received positive responses to the changes.
We remain strong financially, thanks to our Corporate Sponsorship program. We have been able to keep the registration fees for our Chapter meetings low and we have been able to provide some scholarship opportunities for education and Certification study guides.
We struggled with membership growth in FY 03. Our Student Membership program, initiated by Larry Kidd, FY 02 President, has added a new flavor to our meetings. We will continue to support this program in addition to looking for new membership sources and recruitment opportunities.
I was pretty stressed about writing this “State of the Chapter” address for you, as I am anytime I have to write an article, but as I looked through the information and looked up at the National awards proudly displayed in my office, it became easy. When you have such a dedicated board and the great people that make up the Idaho Chapter, you can’t loose.
My sincere thanks.