Secretary's Update, March 2016
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| Victor J. Bernet, MD Secretary/Chief Operating Officer |
Dear ATA Colleagues,
Spring is here!! Although the weather forecast as I write this message indicates many of us still have some Winter like weather with which to deal. We are also within 6 months of our annual meeting and a call for meeting registration will be out before you know it. This time of year many of us have also probably started to plan family Summer vacations as well. Have you ever organized a family beach vacation for an extended group of family members? Maybe representing several generations and including immediate family members and some cousins as well. You try to pick a place to everyone's liking but a few think the house is too small, a few others think it is too far from the beach, another group wants a house on the beach with a pool and most everyone wants to keep the cost of the trip down as well. What if after making the final reservations for the group some family members decide to stay at an alternate place? Now the expense is more for those remaining, such an occurrence would be frustrating and expensive wouldn't it?
So how does the previous story correlate with the ATA meeting? Well, each year's annual meeting is a culmination of years of planning and effort. Bobbi and Adonia, with leadership oversight, identify hotels that have the facilities which meet the ATA's needs for a successful annual meeting. Contracts are negotiated ~ 5-8 years prior to the meeting being held. To hold down costs, the ATA negotiates for use of rooms for the plenary and other various meeting sessions. To avoid paying directly for the use of these rooms which would be very expensive, agreements are made where the hotel provides the meeting rooms as a credit for attendees staying at the hotel. If we fall short of our contracted and required quota of room nights, the ATA is left open to paying an attrition penalty to the hotel. Our sister societies AACE and Endocrine society contend with these same challenges. In some circumstances, attrition fees can be up in the 100 of thousands of dollars. For several reasons, the 2015 ITC presented a perfect storm for the ATA leaving us open to an attrition penalty. However, thanks to the ATA staff's dedication and negotiation abilities, the attrition penalty we faced was reduced to a very manageable amount. Of course, we want to avoid attrition penalties and so want to bring this issue to your attention.
When making reservations for the ATA annual meeting we ask that you use the hotel reservation system managed by ATA's vendor EventSphere provided through the online registration process and ATA website. If you call the hotel directly, please indicate you are attending the ATA meeting. This will ensure the ATA gets credit for your hotel stay and will help us avoid being susceptible to any attrition penalty. In addition, after much consideration, we have decided to start enforcing the collection of a cancellation fee for room reservations cancelled within 60 days of the annual meetings start date. However, we will not begin charging a fee for not booking hotel reservations within the meeting registration process although some other professional societies do so.
Please be aware that the ATA leadership and office staff continually reassess which venues seem to be most suitable for the ATA membership and our annual meeting. If you have any comments or concerns in regards to future hotel arrangements for the annual meeting, the ATA leadership and staff would appreciate hearing your feedback.
In other news, we are excited about the upcoming ATA Symposia in Boston this early April which will provide the opportunity to share the contents of our new guidelines for hyperthyroidism and also pregnancy and thyroid disorders. We also are looking towards the planned strategic conference in June where your ATA leadership and a diverse group of invited members will identify ways to successfully achieve the four strategic goals identified during the January 2015 strategic meeting.
Sincerely,
Victor J. Bernet, MD
Secretary/Chief Operating Officer