AAOS News: Academy Unveils New Strategic Direction

The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) announced its new five-year strategic plan at the organization’s Annual Meeting this week in Las Vegas, Nev. The new plan recognizes that in a rapidly evolving healthcare environment, the Academy must lead the way to define musculoskeletal care and influence future change for its members, their patients, and the profession.
 
“The Board of Directors conducted a thorough review of the current environment and the Academy’s position to sustain growth into the future,” said Thomas E. Arend, Jr., Esq., CAE, AAOS CEO. “We need to continue to provide greater value to the AAOS’ membership, help our members to define and advance quality, and be the voice for the orthopaedic profession.”
 
The Board and AAOS staff leadership spent more than a year focused on its structure, activities, and organizational priorities to better respond to the various disruptive changes affecting orthopaedic medicine. In that time, the AAOS Board of Directors also adopted its first set of governance principles. 
 
The 2019-2023 Strategic Plan includes an updated Vision to reflect an ambitious direction for the Academy’s future as the trusted leaders in advancing musculoskeletal health. It re-focuses and prioritizes the Academy’s activities over the next five years.
 
“The mission of this organization remains the same,” added Arend. “We strongly believe in serving our profession to provide the highest quality musculoskeletal care. This new plan drives the organization to become more focused, strategic and metric-driven, to best deliver on the goals of member experience, quality and culture and provide tangible benefits to our members. This will not occur overnight, but requires a steady effort over a multi-year approach.”
 
“Members are already starting to see these shifts in action,” added 2019-2020 AAOS President Kristy L. Weber, M.D. “We dramatically increased member value with new benefits, such as re-launching an enhanced Orthopaedic Video Theater (OVT) as a free member benefit and added hundreds of surgical technique modules across specialties for online learning. We are continuing to build out value-based tools including expanding the Academy’s Registry Program to better help our members measure and improve quality patient care. This really is an exciting time to be an Academy member.”
 
Dr. Weber unveiled the new Strategic Plan during her speech today at the Your Academy meeting.
 
“As the world’s largest medical association of musculoskeletal specialists, we have a responsibility to evolve the culture and governance of the AAOS Board and volunteer structure to become more strategic, innovative and diverse,” added Dr. Weber. “This will enable us to build a sustainable, successful future for the organization and equip our members to thrive and advance the quality of orthopedic care.”
 
With more than 39,000 members, the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons is the world’s largest medical association of musculoskeletal specialists. The AAOS is the trusted leader in advancing musculoskeletal health. It provides the highest quality, most comprehensive education to help orthopedic surgeons and allied health professionals at every career level best treat patients in their daily practices. The AAOS is the source for information on bone and joint conditions, treatments and related musculoskeletal health care issues and it leads the healthcare discussion on advancing quality.