Welcome back to my latest HypnoGram following a short hiatus while preparing for my first official AASM board of directors meeting as the president. We met in “the big apple,” which would have better been described as “the baked apple” or “a warm apple tart” as the temperatures were in the 100s! But don’t worry, the board was huddled up in an air-conditioned hotel meeting room for the weekend so we were not exposed to that dreadful heat!
It was a very busy meeting – no golf outings or two-hour-long lunches with open bar. We worked through the weekend and discussed a broad expanse of sleep medicine topics from Advanced practice nurses to the Young Investigator Research Forum and everything in between. (Sorry – I could not think of a topic that started with Z). We had serious discussions about which projects should be the highest priority for the AASM and the field of sleep medicine this year – where best to invest our time and money? The board considered a number of new projects including a white paper on academic sleep centers, a process for updating the scoring manual, a joint task force with the SRS on increasing the number of T32 training grants in sleep medicine, and a task force to update and overhaul the accreditation standards.
We also discussed in detail the outline for our integrated sleep management delivery model and will be working with the AASM staff to finalize the model and head to CMS with it in hand to discuss how they might consider instituting it. I believe this will be one of the most important tasks we take on this year – if not the most important. This model will allow us to provide consistent and streamlined care to sleep apnea patients with the ultimate goal of better outcomes at a lower cost. This is what we should all be striving for.
Over the next few HypnoGrams, I will be updating you on these specific projects and their progress. I want you, the membership, to know that you have an extremely dedicated board of directors who work very hard at these board meetings to develop and institute programs and processes to grow and strengthen our field. It will be my pleasure to let you know of that work over the next few weeks. Have a great weekend!