AAPA Town Hall Meeting Wrap
Late yesterday afternoon, AAPA president Cindy Lord, president-elect Steve Hanson and CEO Bill Leinweber were panelists at the academy’s inaugural Town Hall meeting. Questions of any sort were encouraged from the in-person audience, as well as from participants watching remotely as the event streamed online in real time. While the room wasn’t full, Leinweber said he was thrilled with the turnout.
The meeting lasted a full two hours and elicited about two dozen unscripted and wide-ranging questions that the panelists fielded candidly. In fact, so much was discussed that a blog post simply can’t cover it all. Check back with ADVANCE for full coverage over the next few days.
In the meantime, here’s information about just a few of the many topics covered:
PA-owned clinics: One PA who is a clinic owner expressed disappointment in the lack of resources provided by AAPA for PA clinic owners. Leinweber reassured attendees that the academy indeed is supportive of these PAs, but that when it comes to resources, “You have a reason to have disappointment.” Clinic ownership had not been a focus but now is something the academy is looking at.
Election turnout: A question posed via Twitter asked the leaders about meeting AAPA candidates, possibly at the national conference. This prompted an interesting discussion about the extremely low voter turnout for this most recent AAPA election, the first all-electronic election for all academy members. As Hanson noted, “There’s a disengagement from people about the process.” Lord also mentioned that although turnout was low, the balloting company indicated that the AAPA turnout was consistent with other organizations’ first-time electronic balloting. “It did not seem that the academy was out of sync” in terms of election participation, she said.