Board Members Present: Helene Clayton-Jeter, John Grohol, Matthew Holt, Debra Cobb, Eric Bersh, John Grohol, Jan Oldenburg, Judy Danielson, Danny Sands, Amber Soucy, Joe Ternullo, Sue Woods, Geri-Lynn Baumblatt, Sarah Krüg, Kathy Duckett, Burt Rosen, Vera Rulon, Mike Millenson
Board Members Not Present:, Brian Eastwood, Kathy Duckett
Committee Chair Present: Deb Gordon, Membership
Full attendance record available here.
Welcome and Level-setting
Several issues that need Board input.
Minutes from last full board meeting approved
Jan Oldenburg
Treasurer’s Report (Financial and Membership)
Debra Cobb
Current bank balance: ~$121,000. Number of members: 448. Four new members in April. Danny to reach out to Meredith.
Conference Report
Joe Ternullo
Agenda prepared. Sara wants to close off agenda ASAP. Joe referred to posting on website on 5/27. Contributions to agenda via link in posting. Danny: weekly meeting to discuss conference that anyone can participate in. Joe discussed leads on sponsorships. Identify sponsors, feed to Joe, Danny, Matthew. Joe talked about Bill Dougherty, who has run conferences before wants to experiment with having him help bring in sponsors at no cost to SPM. If successful, SPM conference would be reciprocal with Bill’s conference next year. Commission is 35%. Board needs to weigh in. Bill would manage only new sponsorships. Geri asks can we incentivize anyone who brings in new sponsor to give 35% (or some other number). Sara says good idea. Knows about law firm that came up with 10% as incentive based on amount brought in. Will see if she can get guidelines from law firm. Joe thinks Governance Committee should decide if incentives should be opened up to any SPM member. Peter Finn, Esq. can look into legal issues. Joe says discussion can be tied up within 30 days. Geri asks should we tell conference participants that a percentage of sponsorships not going to SPM. Helene likes having help with sponsorships but may need a paid person on staff. Judy asks for a vote on whether this is worth exploring. Helene makes motion to explore. Jan amends. Judy seconds. Board votes. Motion carries. Joe asks for volunteers. Sara volunteers. Conference website will be updated.
New Member Outreach
Deb Gordon
Focusing on new member welcome initiative: board members call one new member a month, or more. Deb has reached out and found that new members had no problems with this idea and liked her involvement so far. Deb wants to create a Google Doc to get input from new members. Wants to make it a dropdown list, with choices. Thanks Amber for help with social media aspects. Danny paraphrases concept: we need to connect with new members and gather info from them. Have it be a way to make people feel welcome. Judy loves the idea. Deb planning for day when we will need to reach out to many more than 10 new member per month. Deb happy to ask for general members to connect with new members. Feels value in being welcomed by someone in leadership role. Jan agrees. Deb’s other idea is to reach out to lapsed members and “gently” inquire about what we can learn from calls to them. Burt will make as many calls as necessary. Judy also volunteered. Helene volunteers. Danny and Joe volunteer.
Advocacy Policy Committee
Vera and Michael
Michael says we need to report to Policy Board from CMS. Discussion of information-blocking penalty. Lots of pro-consumer comments in regulations. SPM needs to send out letter. Deadline is June 3. Letter is in Google Docs. SPM asks about eHealth logo for our use. If we can join we can use their logo. Danny thinks it is important that our logo appears. Helene suggests we are a signatory without logo. Make separate submission where we use our own logo. Any comments submitted by end of day May 29. Michael says there will be a political battle around this. Motion carried unanimously.
Newsletter Dilemma
Danny and Joe
We have no regular newsletter. Sue Woods adds the group did not promise more than they could deliver. Wants Board to ask Newsletter group for their input. Says members like it. Danny wants Danny Van Louen to come to next Board meeting. Joe agrees.
Chicago Meetup
Geri
They have a guest speaker. Meeting set for July 16, 7:30 p.m. Geri is called the “magic maker.” Danny happy about her work. Jan talked about the process being discussed so we can all learn from Geri’s experience. Geri working on this. Holding “lightning talks” to hear about what people are doing. Danny would like to discuss these meetings during the October SPM conference. How do we create a chapter, etc.? Helene talked about getting info at conference. Joe would like to attend in Chicago meetup July.
New Business
Joe and Danny
Joe: date issue with Conference. It’s a 3-day conference. Day 1. Deep Dive (main event). Day 2. Plenary. Day 3. Early break day (12 noon). Concern about spillover from Connected Health Conference. Jan thinks bigger threat is HLTH Conference. Trying to compete with Connected Health. Risk is that Connected Health might not do well this year. Michael: anything we can do to resolve this issue? Joe: we’ve signed contract. Danny: we just have to deal with it. Joe: if we go with Bill Dougherty and it goes well, we will have choices next year.
Adjourned at 7:20 — Next board meeting: June 25, 2019 at 6 pm
Respectfully submitted,
Eric N Bersh
SPM Board Secretary
