Proposed LHIMA Bylaws Changes
Dear LHIMA Members,
The following pages include proposed changes to the LHIMA Bylaws based on information obtained at the AHIMA Leadership Symposium, from the board of directors, and recommendations made directly by AHIMA.
For ease of discussion, I have provided a side-by-side comparison of the changes.
The biggest change that you will notice is the streamlining of the structure of our Board of Directors. After much discussion at the Leadership Symposium about the size of our board, our President, Denice Stelly, asked that I lead a committee to discuss the possibility of restructuring our board. The committee reviewed the board structures of several other comparable CAs, and met to discuss the pros and cons of reducing the size of our board. What we found is that several of our current voting and non-voting board positions could be combined. Not only will this have a positive financial impact on the organization, but it will also allow decisions affecting our organization to be made much more efficiently. The other part of the restructure that I am particularly excited about, is the movement toward more ad-hoc committees. Instead of asking you, our membership, to commit to 1-3 years of a volunteer position, we will be forming short-term committees as the need arises in certain areas. Our hope is that this will enable you to be more active in our organization at the state level. If you have any questions about the board structure, please do not hesitate to let me know.
Other than the board restructuring, many of the changes were minor, bringing us into compliance with the AHIMA bylaws and recommendations. One of those changes I would like to draw your attention to is that we reduced the amount of days that we currently allow members to review the bylaw changes (40 days) to 30 days. AHIMA recently updated their bylaws to make this change, and we agree that it allows our organization to make changes more efficiently. In the current electronic environment, 30 days seems reasonable for document review. We also updated some of the wording to allow the LHIMA members to vote electronically, at their convenience, on changes to the bylaws. We hope this allows more members to have a voice in our organization’s governance.
Please click the links below to review the bylaws. I updated the document in Microsoft Word using the “Track Changes” feature. There is also a final copy of the bylaws with changes, as well as a side-by-side comparison with explanation. If you have any questions or concerns, you may respond in our online response on our proposed bylaw change webpage.
Click here to provide us with your feedback.
We will notify you soon of the date of a WebEx (Internet Meeting) in which we will need our members to dial in and vote live. It is critical that you participate in this call. If approved, all future updates to the bylaws can be voted upon online at your convenience.
Thanks for your time!
Lisa Delhomme, MHA, RHIA
LHIMA President-Elect