Report of the AAPM Board of Directors Meeting
RSNA Meeting, Chicago, IL, December 4, 2013

The following report represents my comments on the last meeting I attended as your representative. The official board packet and/or minutes of the meeting are available on the AAPM website as of this writing at:

http://www.aapm.org/org/organization.asp

The consent agenda consisted of motions to approve the minutes from the August 8, 2013 directors’ meeting, extend Professional Policies 2 – Licensure and The MP’s Role in the Practice of Medicine, 3 – MP Expert Witness, 12 – CT Whole Body Scanning, and 2014 Committee and Individual Appointments. These were approved.

Due to a change in the methodology for calculating Unrelated Business Income Tax and positive market returns for AAPM’s investments, the Association expected a net gain and to meet the reserve target. The target is to maintain an amount equal to one year’s operating budget plus cover long-term contract obligations. The 2013 operating budget was $9,390,796 and commitment of $2,276,000 for a total of $11,666,796. As of October 31, 2013, AAPM’s reserves were $10.9 million or about 7% shy. For 2014, the Finance Committee and Council Chairs developed a budget consistent with revenue expectations that was focused on meeting the goals of the Strategic Plan. I encourage all members to check the link above and review all of the documentation related to this process. There are 70 pages of spreadsheets related to the budget.

There followed an action item to approve changes to the membership of the Strategic Planning Committee. This included a membership listing of the committee and report to the Board of its activities and project funding for 2014.

The submission of multiple reports followed from: the Chairman of the Board, the President, the President-Elect, the Secretary, the Executive Director, listing of Membership totals – 8,142, the Councils – Administrative, Education, Professional, Science, the Journal of Applied Clinical Medical Physics and various Liaison members – I counted 16. You can appreciate why it takes a while to go through the Board packet and then actually conduct the meeting.

There was discussion of members’ questions of late, e.g. the dues increase. It was mentioned that the Board explore different methods of illustrating the budget process such as a 30,000 foot view or what % goes to administrative costs and what % goes to actual performance. Until something like that happens, a thorough review of the arcane details of the budget as given on the link above is your only way of knowing where the Association’s money (and obviously your dues) goes and whether you think it’s worthwhile to the profession.

Again thank you for allowing me to serve. It takes a lot of people to carry out the activities of the Association and I enjoyed seeing some of them in action during my participation.
Sincerely, Don Hess

1/9/2014 1:56:34 PM