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By Mark L Diana, PhD posted 03-21-2019 10:06

  

Full Representation on the Board

As we head into spring, it is a time for new beginnings. As such, at its March meeting, your Board approved changes in the Bylaws that I want to discuss in this blog. While these changes were approved by your Board, bylaws changes need to go to the full member programs for approval. That will happen shortly. The Board also approved related changes in the composition and activity of the Leadership Development Committee that Dr. Glandon will discuss in his, related blog.

As background, the Board has been concerned for a number of years that AUPHA membership on the Board does not adequately represent the full array of dues paying members. As you know, membership and leadership of the Board has been restricted to faculty from full member programs that is CAHME accredited graduate programs and AUPHA certified undergraduate programs. This policy came from the early assumption that full member programs had more resources, more faculty, and the staying power to best represent healthcare management education. At the time that may have been true, but today I think it is clear that there are many programs among our membership that are high quality programs but  not CAHME accredited or AUPHA certified. This policy was also established at the earlier stage of our development as a profession when AUPHA leadership deemed having more accredited or certified programs raised the perceived overall quality of the degrees we granted.

What we find now, however, is that just slightly more than half of our member programs are CAHME accredited or AUPHA certified. Many of the associate member programs are working to seek some form of accreditation or certification, but many others just place a high value on AUPHA membership, but will never pursue one of those designations. Some of these programs have accreditation or certification from other bodies and do not believe that the added cost or effort of attaining full membership is necessary. Many of these are strong programs with a clearly relevant voice. These programs and the faculty associated with them have no mechanism to attain a voice in the leadership of AUPHA through service on the Board.

Therefore, the Board agreed that there should be a mechanism for faculty from non-accredited and non-certified programs to have access to that voice and have approved changes to the AUPHA bylaws to make that possible. These proposed changes will go to full member programs shortly for a vote. I won’t go into the specific proposed language here, but the changes that would result are outlined below:

Recommendation 1: Modify AUPHA bylaws to enable a limited and specified number of faculty from a variety of membership categories to assume Board seats going forward.

Recommendation 2: Explicitly specify in the AUPHA bylaws that only faculty from Full Member programs can become members of the Executive Committee of the Board.

The details of the proposed composition of the Board are as follows:

  • Full Member Programs No less than 10

Graduate and Undergraduate

  • Associate Member Programs No more than 1
  • Affiliate Member Programs No more than 3

Practitioners

  • Individual Members             No more than 1
  • International Program Members No more than 1
  • President/CEO No more than 1

 

The Board believes that these changes allow for a greater voice from all membership classifications, thus supporting our values of collaboration and diversity. At the same time, it preserves the central role of full member programs in AUPHA leadership. However, it is important to understand that even with this change, if it is approved, the composition of the Board might remain as is, or be some variation of the numbers given above, for two reasons. First, the bylaws will not mandate that the Board have members from all of these categories, rather they will only specify the minimum or maximum number of members in each category.  Second, individuals will still have to be nominated for a Board position and be recommended for that position by the Leadership Development Committee. The Leadership Development Committee will continue to examine the credentials of applicants along with their history of productive activity on behalf of AUPHA, all in comparison to the needs of the Board. This is a critical function in general but also in enacting these proposed changes. Dr. Glandon will discuss how we propose to change the composition of the LDC to support these changes in his blog.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me.  I look forward to seeing you in New Orleans this June.

 

Mark

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