doi:10.1016/j.e

Volume 21

AMERICAN SOCIETY OF ECHOCARDIOGRAPHY NEWS

President’s Message

Looking Back, Looking Forward

It’s hard to believe that my year as president is drawing to a close.Without the opportunity to run for reelection, I will turn over theleadership to Dr Zoghbi in June. As many of you know, the presi-dency of our Society is the final year in series of positions thatstretches out for four or five years. Each successive year becomes a bitbusier, but at the same time, more rewarding. As I look back over thepast 12 months, I am both grateful and proud of our team and whatwe accomplished. It is an exciting time to be involved in echo and adynamic time to be a member of ASE.

The presidency of any large organization, especially if limited toone year, is best viewed as a continuum. You inherit projects fromyour predecessor, launch some new initiatives, complete a few things,and leave undone many projects for the next president to mull over.Some things that seemed important last summer fell by the wayside.Others appeared from nowhere and became high priorities over thecourse of the year. You’d like to think you have control over theagenda, but you really don’t.

It has become a tradition to devote the final President’s Message toa review of the year and a chance to say thanks to the staff, members,and executive team. Without them, it would be impossible to accom-plish anything. However, like the winners at the Academy Awards,there is never enough time to thank everyone, and there is always thefear of leaving someone out. So instead, I would prefer to use this finalmessage to look ahead to what we must face together over thecoming years as members of ASE. In some ways, it is less importantwhat you complete and more important what is left to be accom-plished. We need to view the future as both opportunity and threat.Here are 4 important topics for us to consider as we contemplate thefuture of echo and ASE.

1. Reinventing echo. Echo has become a mature technology. It’s hard toimagine practicing medicine without it. But when something becomes soindispensible and pervasive, there is a danger that it will be taken forgranted – essentially becoming a commodity. How do we prevent echofrom becoming a commodity? The best way is through fostering innovationand improvement. Echo has never stood still and wemust continue to pushthe limits of the technique through research and development. We mustmake it exciting for young people to enter the field and devote their careerto improving the technology and expanding the applications. At the sametime, we must support and promote the newest modalities, such as 3Decho. Essentially, wemust never allow ourselves to think that echo can’t getbetter. We must always work to improve it.

2. Growing competition. Competition is good, it fosters improvement. Inimaging, the new modalities, especially MRI, can be viewed as threats toechocardiography. But in reality, these new techniques are good for

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patients and good forecho. They will force us todo a better job, be moreefficient and creative, andprovide greater value toour patients. We must be-come familiar with thesetechniques and under-stand their strengths andlimitations. We should en-courage young people tolearn about the new mo-dalities and embrace theconcept of multimodalityimaging. We should orderthe right test, at the righttime, in the right patient,for the right reason. I amconfident if we take thatapproach, as echocardio-graphers, we will have nothing to fear from the competition.

3. Pressures on reimbursement.Most people believe we are spending toomuch of our health care budget on imaging. Quite frankly, it is hard toargue with that statement. I personally believe echo is a great value,provided it’s performed in a quality manner and for the right reasons. Asthe pressures to reduce reimbursement continue to mount, I ask you toconsider three requests. First, be a vocal advocate for echocardiography.When the Society asks you to write letters or contact legislators, do sowillingly and enthusiastically. Second, look for ways to reduce costswithout compromising quality. Being efficient stewards of health caredollars is nothing to be ashamed of and controlling costs is one way toaccomplish that. Finally, bear in mind that overutilization of imaging isalways a risk. With the publication of appropriateness criteria, we now haveguidelines to tell when and how often a test should be ordered. This is goodfor patients and good for health care. Become familiar with these criteriaand make them a part of your practice.

4. Get on the quality bandwagon. Over the next few years, there will bemounting pressure to define, measure, and improve quality in health care.Imaging will be a major part of these initiatives. As members of ASE, weshould acknowledge the importance of these efforts and take a leadershiprole in their development. Within ASE, our position on quality is welldefined, involving lab accreditation, sonographer credentialing, and physi-cian competency. I urge you to support and embrace these efforts as we alltry to do a better job taking care of patients.

It has been an exciting and rewarding year, but we obviously havemuch work to do. I know that Bill Zoghbi and the rest of the staff andleadership team will lead us to great things. But they will only besuccessful with your support and, more importantly, your involve-ment. ASE is a volunteer organization – it only works when you do.So please get involved and let us continue to work together on these

Thomas Ryan, MD, FASE

and other important projects

urnal of the American So

. See you in Toronto.

19Aciety of Echocardiography