6/27/01 Update

[Guest guest]

Morning everyone,

Though it's been quite awhile since I've done one of these, I'm

pretty sure I still remember how. :-)

1. Good news/bad news. The bad news (for us, but good for her

personally) is that Arlene Gatto, the newly-elected TFCA Treasurer,

is leaving the wonderful world of tx at the end of this week :-( The

good news (for us) is that Sandy , who was also a nominee for

Treasurer, has graciously agreed to step in as the new Treasurer. On

behalf of the rest of the TFCA Governing Body, our sincere thanks to

Arlene for her (all-too-brief) tenure & sincere best wishes in her

new endeavors. To Sandy goes our grateful appreciation for agreeing

to step in as the new Treasurer. With Arlene's departure, the TFC

community has now lost 3 tremendously talented people in a very short

time (the others s & the upcoming departure of Amy

Kaye). Best wishes to all of them.

2. The HCFA Transcript. I'm still awaiting the edits from the HCFA

people. Some vacations on their end has slowed things down, but I

talked w/Eve Fisher Tuesday afternoon & she's hoping to have it back

to me by the end of the week.

3. The HCFA Session in SLC. I rec'd a synoposis of the evaluation

comments from this session recently from the Tx Administrators

Committee & wanted to address 2 recurring comments which appeared.

A. Having the HCFA Reps in Person. My first choice & believe

me, we tried for nearly 6 months to figure out a way to get them to

SLC. We even investigated the possibility of utilizing people from

the Denver Field Office (because of its close proximity to SLC) to no

avail If you think MSP & ESRD are confusing, you should try

navigating the HCFA travel policy. That little election snafu in

Florida didn't help matters, either, since it left all the gov't

agencies in limbo until the election was decided. Of course, once it

was, it was clear that there would be a complete change in personnel

@ the highest levels-unfortunately, the levels @ which approval for

an expenditure such as this would be required.

B. Videoconferencing the Session. My choice #2 & we looked

into that, too. The costs of such an undertaking, however, were

tremendous & just totally out of reach. Due of time constraints ( &

believe me, we went right down to the wire, well into January, as I

recall), there came a point where a decision had to be made to either

go w/the conference call option or simply scrap the entire session &

go in a different direction entirely. To those who were unhappy

w/the conference call option, it was my decision to go forward with

it, so the blame rests w/me. Not to make any excuses, but I think

it's important to keep in mind that nothing like this had ever been

done @ a Forum & , all things considered (and trust me, you don't want

to know what some of those were!), it went pretty well. As w/all new

things, it was a learning experience for everyone involved & , should

the opportunity present itself again in a future Forum, there are

definately things I would do differently.

4. 10th Annual Tx Mgmt Forum. Nope, no dates or location yet.

Soon, I hope, though. Speaking of next year's Forum, thanks to the

people who responded to my question a couple of weeks ago as to what

you'd like to see next year, what you hated about SLC, & what you'd

like to see changed. Keep those ideas & comments coming though, ok?

J. Aguiar

Beth Israel Deaconess, Boston