MMA House of Delegates Votes to Shrink Board of Trustees
Date: 20-09-2012
| Thomas Siefferman, M.D., testifies during the discussion on governance changes. |
[MMA News Now, Sept. 20, 2012] The MMA’s House of Delegates (HOD) voted at the Annual Meeting to restructure the Board of Trustees, shrinking it from 33 members to between 12 and 14 members.
The reduction was one of several governance changes debated at the meeting held in Minneapolis on Sept. 14 and 15. Other proposed changes included:
• changing the membership of the board from solely geography-based to competency-based with a sensitivity to geographic differences (which passed);
• replacing the House of Delegates with multiple Policy Council Forums to increase member input opportunities (not passed);
• gaining a better understanding of member concerns by using multiple “listening” sessions throughout the state (passed); and
• giving all MMA members the opportunity to vote in elections (not passed).
During testimony a number of physicians argued that more time is needed for members to fully understand the proposal before moving to eliminate the HOD. A reference committee agreed and the subject will be taken up at a later date.
However, many physicians favored adopting the listening sessions and increasing the number of policy forums. The MMA will now move forward with fleshing out both ideas.
With the change, the board will now have between nine and 11 trustees representing competencies and different geographic Trustee Districts.
The competencies identified include things like expertise in state and federal health policy, strategic and financial planning, membership growth, member engagement, public relations and communications, governance, and revenue generation through new products.
The geographic breakdown includes at least one trustee from each Trustee District but no more than 50 percent of the trustees coming from any one Trustee District.
The president, president-elect, immediate past president, speaker of the House and vice speaker of the House will be additional voting board members. Plus, the chair of the AMA delegation and the MMA CEO will be ex-officio members of the board without voting rights unless the AMA delegate chair has been also elected as a Trustee.
While the other portions of the Governance Task Force recommendations were not adopted by the House of Delegates, the actions direct the MMA to continue its work on needed governance changes and bring the issue back to the next meeting of the House of Delegates. Work over the next year will be focused on gathering input from members and answering concerns that were raised by delegates about the specific implementation of these changes.