PRESIDENTS
REPORT
Hello Members, I trust you all had a restful and happy Christmas and New Year break as we put 2020 behind us. With the COVID-19 vaccine starting to roll-out and we becoming accustomed to lockdown procedures, confidence in returning to a “normal” lifestyle is gaining momentum.
Strategic Planning Since my time on the HIMAA Board, I have been involved with two strategic plans. My reflection is that these plans for HIMAA were unwieldy and unachievable. The strategic plans became a wish list of what HIMAA would like to achieve as we solicited for feedback widely. The Board then tried to distil this into a strategic plan. HIMAA has made some notable achievements in areas such as the Clinical Coding Practice Framework and successfully secured the next International Federation of Health Information Management (IFHIMA) Congress to be held in Brisbane. However, there are many agendas in the strategic plans that were not achieved. Ambition is laudable; however, we need to work within the capabilities and resources to implement our goals. The Board met earlier this month and is committed to establishing a new strategic plan in the coming months that focuses on the core priorities for HIMAA and the HIM profession. We will share this with you in due course and hope that you can support us moving forward. As a professional Association with limited resource we rely on volunteers – you, the member, to help propel us forward.
National Office The Board is pleased that Jae has settled into the CEO role and is positioning the national office to support our objectives. We also welcome Andrea Gall, our new Executive Support Officer, who will provide valuable support to both Jae and the Board. As my family recently celebrated the Lunar New Year, it is said that hard work is rewarded in the year of the Ox. I know many of us at HIMAA are ready to accept the challenge. Onwards and upwards! Cheens Lee President cheensl@himaa.org.au
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