Vital Times 2019 - 10

A Letter from CSA's
Executive Director
By David Butler | CSA Executive Director

C

SA is making great strides
in priority areas.

The New Year is a good time
to look back and assess recent
challenges and accomplishments.
As I enter my fifth year as your Executive Director, I can
look back with a sense of pride and accomplishment at
what we have achieved as a team of staff members and
physician leaders on behalf of CSA members.
We have evaluated members' needs in a variety of ways
over the last several years - member surveys, board
of directors' planning sessions, member focus groups,
and even professional marketing research. All of these
assessments have resulted in a relatively common set
of priorities:
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State level advocacy - with an emphasis
on reimbursement and scope of practice
Information and engagement regarding
Practice Management
Effective engagement of residents and
young physicians
Improvement of the public image
of anesthesiology

CSA leaders - your Board of Directors, Committee
Chairs and Committee Members, the House of Delegates
and a succession of engaged, committed Presidents
(Drs. Jim Moore, Mark Zakowski, Karen Sibert,

10 | CSA Vital Times

Sam Wald, Christine Doyle and now, Jeff Poage) have
worked together to develop and implement initiatives
to successfully address these priorities.

State level advocacy
GASPAC "Fix" - The individual dues assignment of
$125 per member, combined with a $99 per active
member dues increase, was implemented in January
of 2018. Since then, GASPAC has increased its cash on
hand from approximately $30,000 to over $650,000 and
has nearly doubled its annual contributions. GASPAC is
well on its way to being one of the top specialty society
PACs in California.
Redistricting - The new redistricting initiative, which
aligned geographic districts with state legislative
districts and was implemented in 2019, is really starting
to bear fruit. District Directors, delegates, and board
members have hosted over a dozen in-district visits
with state legislators since the summer. The key to this
kind of grassroots advocacy is for individual members
to position themselves as a trusted resource to local
legislators, becoming their "go to" person on issues
impacting health care and the practice of anesthesiology.
KP Lobbying and PR Team - The Advocacy and
Public Affairs team at KP Public Affairs in Sacramento
continues to benefit CSA - opening doors and
expanding relations to legislators and their staffs on
key issues that impact CSA members and the practice
of anesthesiology. While the passage of AB 72 has
Vital Times 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Vital Times 2019
