Long Range Planning Committee Update

David W. Polly, Jr., MD
Long Range Planning Committee Chair

The Long Range Planning Committee is charged with identifying sites for future Annual Meetings & Course and the IMAST meeting. Committee members include: John P. Dormans, MD; Ferran Pellisé, MD, PhD; Benny T. Dahl, MD, PhD; Kenneth MC Cheung, MD; Henry F. H. Halm, MD, and Ronald A. Lehman, Jr., MD.

Currently, we are looking at potential sites for 2020.Thank you to many members and groups of members for providing wonderful suggestions about possible venues.

Site selection is based upon a series of criteria. These criteria are viewed in a matrix format. These criteria include:

1) Does the site have the physical capacity to handle the meeting? This requirement includes meeting space, sleeping space, breakout room space. Given the increasing size of the Society and our meetings, our choices are becoming more constrained, especially given our relatively narrow time windows for both meetings.

2) Ease of travel. Given our increasingly international nature, airport capacity is becoming a more important factor.

3) For IMAST there are constraints about ability of our industry partners to get their equipment in and out of the location and/or country.

4) Safety. There are significant challenges throughout the world about the safety of foreigners traveling in various locations.

5) AdvaMed/EucaMed and ACCME rules about meeting venues. Destination resorts (i.e. location at a beach) is not acceptable to some of these governing bodies.  Various constraints exist as to what can and cannot be supported. This also appears to be a moving target as the rules are changing and evolving.

6) Membership density at or near the proposed location. This is a consideration but it is weighed in with all of the other criteria.

7) Cost. As a society we try to be good stewards of our limited resources. A variety of contract factors play in to this such as paying or not paying for meeting space (such as hotel space or convention center meeting space), hotel costs, travel costs, and meeting support costs.

8) Ease of making the details of the meeting work. Some locations have been easy and reliable, others have been profoundly challenging.

Currently for 2020, we are looking at North American venues for the Annual Meeting, to include Phoenix, AZ; Seattle, WA; Denver, CO; and Austin, TX. For IMAST, outside North America in 2020, we are looking at Australia, New Zealand and possibly Chile. These choices have been proposed by members and/or staff and discussed among the Long Range Planning Committee. There have been several great submissions/proposals by members. In some cases dates were not available. In others there were not adequate physical facilities. Site visits are done by myself and Tressa Goulding. Our recommendations are then made to the Board of Directors, along with projected costs. All of these factors are considered and a final decision is made by the Board and contracts initiated and then signed.

Chair: David W. Polly, Jr., MD Committee: John P. Dormans, MD; Ferran Pellisé, MD, PhD; Benny T. Dahl, MD, PhD; Kenneth MC Cheung, MD; Henry F. H. Halm, MD, and Ronald A. Lehman, Jr., MD.