IR: Full-time Investment

By Susan E. Sedory Holzer, MA, CAE

SIR Executive Director

What a way to start off the first quarter of 2012! SIR recorded its most successful Annual Scientific Meeting in recent history, with the highest physician attendance ever and overwhelming positive feedback about the opportunities for IR in the latest innovation, research and collaborative efforts advancing the value of IR practice.

Among the meeting’s many superlatives:

• Attendance of more than 5,400, with records also set by residents, clinical associates and hospital administrators
• More than 21,000 individual sessions attended, eclipsing the previous year’s record of 15,097
• A first-ever mobile app downloaded more than 3,000 times, allowing attendees to organize their schedules, read speaker bios, navigate the exhibit hall and even follow @SIRmembers on Twitter
• More than 115 million media impressions (that’s the number of individuals who may have read or heard about IR research and treatments), thanks to coverage by social and traditional outlets
• A spectacular SIR Foundation Gala at San Francisco City Hall that raised a record-breaking $480,000

You should know that for us—your leaders and Society staff—advancing the value of IR is a full-time investment. As fast as we packed up from our week in San Francisco and returned to our Fairfax, Va., headquarters, we resumed work on our year-round programs that ensure IR continues to transform health care for the better.

SIR’s ongoing focus carries on this year’s meeting theme, “IR Evidence,” as we continue growing our commitment to develop and prove the care-changing advances that propel IR’s value ahead of other treatment options and medical specialties.

The energy and financial resources that result from the annual meeting make it possible for your leaders and Society staff to stay active on many fronts. Accomplishments to watch for in the coming months, based on committee engagement, include 

• Advocating for fair coding valuation and reviewing the interim 2013 Medicare Physician Fee Rule to ensure that new codes for thrombolysis, carotid angiography and foreign body retrieval are reflective of the RUC-recommended values and not unilaterally cut by CMS (Health Policy and Economics Division)
• Completing our IR Value Project and communicating those results to broad legislative and consumer audiences (IR Value Task Force)
• Constructing a blueprint for clinical and performance measurement registries (Quality Initiative Committee)
• Distributing an SIR Foundation two-minute public awareness video about interventional radiology and raising money for IR research (SIR Foundation)
• Reviewing Wikipedia for accurate IR content and providing social media best practices to members (Communications Committee)  and
• Anticipating—and supporting—your training and credentialing needs

In looking at these activities collectively, the time is right to update our strategic framework. The current plans for the Society and Foundation, established in 2007, have served us well for growing and sustaining a well-trained IR workforce, advancing clinical practice, fostering research, and increasing our visibility and advocacy.

Yet, it’s time that we look to the next horizon—an essential piece of succeeding in our increasingly complex world. Your Society and Foundation leaders will meet at the end of May to build a combined strategy direction for the next three to five years. We’ll devote energy to innovation— identifying opportunities, thinking of things we’ll want to invest in, figuring out how to ramp them up and make them scalable—as well as “disengaging” and recognizing what we should stop doing so that we’ll have the time and resources to devote to innovation. We’ll also be paying close attention to the feedback members gave by speaking to Society officers or participating in our Idea Café or in committee meetings during the Annual Scientific Meeting. You’ve told us what’s important to you.

We know that the rapid pace of change in health care is putting more and more pressure on each of you. Now, more than ever, SIR will be there 24/7 to proactively support the IR community with a variety of purposeful initiatives. To help you transform health care for the better, SIR remains invested in you—full time.
Originally published in SIR's May/June IR News