President ’ s Report
Peter Berryman | ATMS President
Innovative , even disruptive , blue-sky strategic thinking has been utilised by our directors , staff and members to inform our strategic planning , which in turn generates an operational business plan that we skilfully roll out over time to drive our professional association and its members forward . This is also the process that we use for our risk management scenario planning , as well as tackling the big issues challenging our profession . This is why the ATMS Board has had regular strategic sessions at our Board and Committee meetings to plan ahead for our success , as well as reviewing where we have recently been and what we have learned . We use a variety of insightful lead and lag indicators to know where we are going , and where we have come from . Developing a new three-year strategic plan for 2021 to 2023 has been an achievable goal , given the frequent changes we have been seeing lately with droughts , fires , floods and a pandemic-induced recession .
Our last strategic plan was effective from 2017 to 2020 . During that time we have achieved all our stated goals . The first of these goals was achieved by providing a Continuing Professional Education ( CPE ) program that has been the envy of all the other associations in our profession , and is an ongoing and evolving source of professional nourishment for all members . The second goal has been facilitating our fruitful relationships with private health insurance providers . Although rebates were lost for 16 of our modalities from 1 April 2019 , a signal of our success was that rebates have remained in place for nutrition practitioners , massage practitioners and the registered modalities . Thirdly , the ATMS Board has been successful in our outwardly-oriented advocacy work , as well as achieving our fourth goal of inwardly-focused member support . Our lobbying team of directors and staff know Parliament House rather well after our many meetings there with representatives , senators , ombudsmen , department officials and their staff . Not only have we been addressing our political issues as practitioners , we have also addressed , through our membership of the Council of Small Businesses of Australia ( COSBOA ), our particular economic issues as micro and small businesses with these same parliamentarians and public servants . We count as a significant success on this advocacy topic how we contributed to the Minister of Health ’ s establishing the Natural Therapies Review Expert Advisory Panel ( NTREAP ) on 07 April 2019 . We have made two submissions of high level evidence supporting our modalities to this Review , which is still currently under way . The best possible outcome in 2022 will be that all 16 modalities that were denied Private Health Insurance rebates will have their status restored . We also achieved the maintenance of our Goods and Services Tax ( GST ) exemption for our professional service fees , removal of which was threatened by the previous Shadow Minister for Health . What has been rather remarkable has been the extent of collaboration between the natural medicine professional associations working together for one voice in our representations to government officials on numerous topics over recent years . After many failed attempts at collaboration over previous years , when we do collaborate , instead of competing , we achieve so much more in fulfilling our mutual advocacy goals . ATMS is happy to lead the charge forward with our advocacy goals alone if we must , though the reception we get from public servants in Canberra when we can provide a united and collaborative front is so much more successful . I won ’ t try and thank each of our collaborators here , as there are so many ( though you know who you are if you are reading this ).
Working with the media has also been a significant part of our advocacy role , with both traditional media partners and our own multiple social media channels . This outreach has been a great success , as quantitatively measured by such things as likes , shares , comments , visits , click rates , opening rates , reactions , reach , engagements , followers , subscribers , referrals , sponsors , ticket sales , organic promotions , posts and blogs . Sustaining this communication keeps the directors on our Marketing & CPE Committee and our support staff busy . We spend a significant portion of our operational budget on this facet of member support , for Student members and our accredited education institution partners , through to the Associate , Accredited , Fellow and Life members too . Our peer-reviewed journal is still published four times a year , thanks to the authors , advertisers and editing team .
What of the future then ? Rest assured that that we will continue to maintain our past achievements . An ever-evolving support structure for all members is looking likely , setting up our members for even greater professional and business success . We were unnecessarily concerned that the pandemic would compromise our membership renewals in 2020 , so our new growth strategy has key objectives to expand our practitioner role in the Australian and global health provision community . We are confident that our continuing advocacy role will soon return natural medicine to its rightful place in the private health insurance space , supported by our ongoing commitment to high quality research evidence . Looking forward to continued work with you .
Always in your service …
Peter Berryman President
JATMS | Winter 2021 | 65