I received plenty of feedback on my “Meeting Notes from the PFA Orlando Symposium” and I’ve decided to formulate them into a “Top Ten” list for clarity and ease of consumption. To be clear, this is in no way a comprehensive survey but simply a review of what came back to me over the past week.

10) The PFA Board of Directors (BOD) was unanimously applauded for bringing the management of the Association in house.

9) The PFA’s BOD has done a great job of getting the Association back to being debt free.

8) More than a few people commented that they were unaware that the PFA was still in existence and vowed to renew their membership.

7) Some past PFA members indicated that they were deliberately misled into believing that the PFA was in fact defunct.

6) Both current and past PFA members expressed frustration regarding the administrative burden of accepting Medicare assignment for the Therapeutic Shoes for Diabetics (TSD)

5) It would seem that most Pedorthists in private practice - the so called “Mom and Pop Pedorthists” often considered the core base of the PFA - no longer accept Medicare assignment. This is something that needs to be evaluated for verification.

4) A few people commented that the 2006 merger of BCP and ABC was not a good move. Dane LaFontsee, past PFA President, wrote a great piece on this subject titled The State of Pedorthicswell worth the ten minutes to read it. Not sure if this could be reversed or not.

3) The PFA and the Association’s management at the time are considered at fault for failing to adequately represent their member’s interests in front of Medicare with regards to the new paperwork requirements for TSD reimbursement.

2) Although it is understood that the PFA held little influence over the APMA with regards to the administration of the exhibit hall, if the PFA is to continue to secure the support of the manufacturers in the exhibit hall for future symposiums, then more needs to be done to entice attendees into the hall. Inadequate lunches aside, unopposed time includes preventing corporate “lunch and learn ” events scheduled at the same time as an inferior lunch in the exhibit hall.

1) And the top over-all theme was…the educational tracks at the annual symposium need to offer Pedorthists a greater opportunity to improve their knowledge base and skill sets. The joint symposium with the APMA was generally considered to be an improved learning experience.

There were quite a few comments to support the idea of exploring whether it would be feasible to join up with OT /PT symposiums. One Pedorthist even suggested that the 2 year commitment with the APMA should be honored but that moving forward, the PFA should explore rotating every two years between several allied healthcare associations to provide the opportunity to network both for academics and for practice development. This last idea has real merit as in theory and if feasible, it could encourage attendance at least every two years and get the Association membership back up in numbers.