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News -> November, 2001 News
David W. Kennedy, M.D.
ARS Treasurer
University of Pennsylvania, PA
The Society has maintained fiscal solvency while maintaining its educational programs and excellent meetings, and, at the same time, has been able to use its financial resources to act on socioeconomic issues on behalf of our members. This has been achieved by minimizing organizational costs. Specifically, the infrastructure of the Society has been kept to an absolute minimum, relying heavily on volunteerism and unpaid assistance. I, and the Board, feel that this is the way that you would like to see your hard-earned dues utilized, and it is the way that we will continue to operate in the future.
However, at the same time, we must have the resources to hire the appropriate legal advice and to act on behalf of the membership in a concerted fashion when challenged with the "FESS mess" or more recently, the CPT bundling issues and the denial of payment on code 61795. We have been successful in this arena but these issues will likely in the future, fall more heavily on the Society. As previously reported, the AAO-HNS has determined that the specialty societies will need to play a significantly more active role in their very expensive burden of re-reviewing CPT codes and practice expenses. Because of this, and the fact that our operating fund has already shown some decrease in the past two years, I recommended, and the Board approved, a dues increase from $200 to $240 next year. We recognize that this is a tight fiscal time for everyone in medicine, but believe that this is required if we are to be able to act effectively on your behalf, and on behalf of the subspecialty of Rhinology.
This decision has not been taken lightly. However, our dues have not increased in many years. Additionally, paid dues include the cost of either the American Journal of Rhinology or the journal Rhinology and the cost of the each individual subscription to our journal subscription has increased significantly over the years. In addition, out of the dues, the Society pays a small subscription for each member to the International Rhinologic Society. This leaves a significantly reduced amount of money available for operations from the dues. Given that our dues are also one of the lowest of any society, most of whom do not include a Journal, I hope that you will conclude that the Society is being well managed financially.
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