President’s Message – Q1 2018

Welcome to 2018!  My name is Chandler Ewing and I am the new president for your MS ACHE chapter. 

For the next two years, I will be working diligently with my fellow board members to make sure our chapter grows and thrives. Last month, the board reviewed our chapter growth and objectives for 2017 and set our goals for 2018. We have chosen two areas of focus: recruitment and retention and increasing the number of our chapter fellows. We will need your help to meet these ambitious goals! 

The national ACHE goal for annual member growth is 11.8%. Our chapter’s 2017 member growth rate was 3.8%. This was driven primarily by a drop in our retention rate. The tenure of a health care administrator can be short and, at times, the turnover rate can be high. Turnover numbers are beyond our control, but the board welcomes any feedback that would help with recruitment or retention.

In the coming year, we also plan to reach out to C-suite membership and challenge them to support early and mid-careerists participation in ACHE for career development. We will also continue our work to get health care management students more involved in the chapter. (This year, for example, we offered a reduced student rate to our winter meeting.)

Our second goal is increasing our number of Fellows. Offering local face-to-face hours is important in that regard as it saves our members both money and time to attend meetings near home. We plan to offer 12 face-to-face hours around the state.  Our winter meeting in February offered three face-to-face hours,  but do not fret if you were not able to join us. We will offer nine more hours in the coming year. The tentative schedule will be:

If for some reason you cannot attend these meetings in person, ACHE has authorized the MS chapter to offer satellite locations where you can sign in with an authorized proctor and get credit for the course. The board will meet in March and fine tune those details, so there will be more to come. 

ACHE is a volunteer organization. I appreciate the time that many of you provide by serving on the board and mentoring our future leaders. The FACHE credential signifies expertise, experience, and commitment, and it is exemplified in our chapter members’ willingness to serve. The ACHE tagline is Leaders Who Care, and I am blessed to lead a board in the coming years that cares deeply about health care in Mississippi.

I look forward to seeing all of you in at least one MS ACHE meeting this year, and I look forward to working with the board and chapter to increase our retention rates and increase our number of Fellows.

Best Regards,

Chandler