Prepared by the SVS Young Surgeons Advisory Committee

Prepared by Bhagwan Satiani, MD, MBA^a and Michael Go, MD^a on behalf of the SVS Community Practice Committee

Prepared by the SVS Young Surgeons Advisory Committee

This is the second in a series of practice memos that are being developed to assist vascular surgeons to effectively market their practices.

Prepared by the SVS Young Surgeons Advisory Committee

This is the first in a series of practice memos developed to assist vascular surgeons to effectively market their practices.

Prepared by Stephen P. Murray, MD, FACS^a and Bhagwan Satiani, MD, MBA^b on behalf of the SVS Community Practice Committee

Prepared by Timothy Wu, MD and Rabih A. Chaer, MD on behalf of the SVS Young Surgeons Committee and Nichol L. Salvo, DPM on behalf of the APMA Young Physicians’ Leadership Panel 

Psychologists place great emphasis on the object permanence milestone, but object impermanence is the more brutal lesson. My experience is now familiar and commonplace. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have lost a parent during the pandemic. Our usual methods of closure have been stripped from us. People are dying in isolation, and the ones they leave behind must often grieve alone. Our failure to control the pandemic has had profound psychological consequences beyond the endless death toll. Our country has risen to similar challenges before, and I believe it will again if we learn from the mistakes we made this year. To accomplish this, we must create a complete account of the costs we have endured.

As the election nears, most of you identify as Democrat or Republican. Without abandoning your core beliefs, I would ask you to consider another affiliation—that of a scientist. Scientists can be progressive or conservative. Their one shared political principle is anti-authoritarianism. Tyrants have taken many roles: dictator, pope and king. Regardless of the form, eventually he (it is usually he) needs to tear down the truth. And it is science that stands in the way.

A few years ago, in his presidential address to the Midwestern Vascular Surgical Society, Mark Mattos, MD, spoke eloquently about the need to “protect our specialty.” A large part of this, he argued, is protecting our patients; no other specialty in medicine can provide the type of comprehensive vascular care that we offer. The daily reality we all face is the potential for declining Medicare reimbursement for our services.

While the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects dominated 2020–21 fiscal year—including the cancellation of the live 2020 Vascular Annual Meeting (VAM)—it did not deter progress on many important initiatives. “When covid hit, it intensified our focus on what was truly important: our members, their patients and the SVS as their Society,” said Executive Director Kenneth M. Slaw, PhD. “That focus was sustained the past 15 months and it has led to innovation and an unprecedented volume of member value programs.” He outlined important highlights from the fiscal year that ended March 31—just more than a year after the pandemic was declared—and the vital initiatives that continue to move forward.