Leadership

Embracing Change to Influence Our Future

By James Frieberg, MBA, CPCS, CPMSM

For this year’s conference in Denver, we are excited to bring you something a bit different for our closing keynote session. This year, our Immediate Past President and Chair of the NAMSS Professional Development Council, Michelle Stultz, RN, CPMSM, CPCS, FMSP, will host a diverse panel of speakers who will provide their perspectives on how we collectively chart the path forward and charge ahead as an industry which has already come so far. Our closing keynote panel will include:

• Hall Render Killian Health & Lyman Legal Counsel, Brian C. Betner, Esq.
• GI Alliance Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer, Kate Conklin, MS, CHC, FMSP, CPMSM, CPCS, CPHQ
• Memorial Health Meadows Hospital Chief Medical Officer, Karen McColl, MD
• San Francisco Health Network, Medical Staff Services Director James Frieberg, MBA, CPCS, CPMSM

Before diving right into the path ahead, it’s crucial to take a glance back behind us to recognize how far we’ve come together. I want to first encourage each of you to think back to the time when you first began learning the fundamentals of becoming an MSP. For me, I was organizing expirable printouts to file into paper folders which I’d have to create when new providers applied or when the 20–30-year veteran provider’s files would break because they were bursting at the seams from every reappointment packet over the years. I recall learning about landmark cases and the stories of both Michael Swango and Christopher Duntsch from the ladies who must have spent most of their careers doing credentialing and medical staff governance. We used rubber stamps to signal that a peer reference being faxed was the “Second Request” or “Final Request” while we would also use these small textured rubber fingers to page through a provider’s initial or reappointment packet. 

Look at how far we’ve come even in the short 17 years that I’ve been in this profession. Now we’ve got tools to review providers’ application packets digitally, web crawlers to pull our verifications for us, and the size and caliber of our industry has evolved so much from where it began. We focus on aspects of regulatory compliance, risk mitigation, and patient safety, and we can articulate how our work intersects all these areas adjacent to our work. But, what’s next?

We will focus on conducting a thoughtful treatment of this very topic, specifically as it relates to changing dynamics within our industry. For example, the composition of our workforce is quickly changing. We have industry leaders who have been in this profession for decades, and many will be retiring if they haven’t already. These juggernauts of MSPs have extensive knowledge, experience, and anecdotes which need to be passed down and preserved as a new generation of MSPs continues to file into our profession each day. As we find more and more Gen Z-ers entering our profession, it’s fair to pause and consider a few related questions:  

• Will we be ready? 

• What does this generation value? 

• How do we integrate them into our industry while preserving the longstanding, institutional memory of the MSPs who came before us? 

 You will want to stick around for this engaging closing panel discussion from this year’s 48th Educational Conference. NAMSS is offering a complete conference registration package for 2025 (worth more than $2,000), and you must be present to win! We look forward to seeing you in Denver, Sept. 30–Oct. 2, where our experts will be discussing these ideas and much more. 

Register today for #NAMSS24.