Ear, Nose and Throat Consultants, Inc.
What is the greatest challenge our specialty is currently facing and how would you advocate for action through member engagement?
One of the most significant challenges in clinical otolaryngology is patient satisfaction. I believe that we need to focus on the patient experience. A gratified patient improves our sense of accomplishment, trusts in our care and promotes our practice in the community. Delivering an excellent patient experience at an otolaryngology visit requires thoughtful planning, team effort and feedback. Our Academy members have developed fantastic approaches to handling phone calls, scheduling appointments, reception processing, managing late doctors and late patient arrivals, navigating complex clinical issues and challenging patients, and addressing large patient out-of-pocket expenses. Nevertheless, there are more issues our practices regularly face that affect a patient’s experience and ultimately our own work satisfaction. More than ever, our patients need to know that the clinic is clean and safe for their visit. Staffing a clinic or operating room may be the next great challenge to running an otolaryngology enterprise with excellence. Unless we collectively discuss successful and failed strategies, we are individually solving the same problems. I plan to engage the membership in dialogues about patient satisfaction, including in ENT Connect, The Bulletin and our meetings. I will also ask state and specialty societies to encourage their members to bring their best approaches to us. By engaging the membership in sharing their solutions that have improved their practices, we can all get ideas for providing better care to our patients.
What initiatives would you recommend strengthening the relationship and engagement opportunities between AAO-HNS state, local, and specialty BOG societies?
Like so many other aspects of our specialty, we are lucky to “stand on the shoulders of giants”. Together, the AAO-HNS Board of Governors and our administrative team is the group with the ability to mediate between the AAO-HNS Committees, state and local societies and Specialty BOG societies. The Chair of the BOG is responsible for taking feedback from these society leaders and members. The best way to strengthen relationships and engage opportunities is for the Chair to be accessible and interested in listening. The Board of Governors Executive Committee has regular meetings to review society issues. The society members and leaders should be provided with instructions to bring issues to the BOG. We are at the crossroad of cancelled face to face meetings and incredible access to electronic communications. I plan to use these communication tools to listen. As Chair of the BOG, I would be responsible for advocating for our membership, state, local, and specialty BOG societies to the AAO-HNS leadership.
