History - 1951

The Minnesota Association held its first formal meeting in Hibbing in 1951.  This was a successful meeting and would be repeated in future years.  Meanwhile, Minnesota people would continue their interest in NACM even though that organization was moving away to a more national venue.  While NACM was doing so, and becoming larger and more formalized, the new state association with little or no bureaucracy would be a comforting continuation of the intimate networking which most managers found very valuable.

Was the Minnesota Association of Clinic Managers the first such state group to organize?  Les Richardson of California thinks that it probably was.  Minnesota Managers active at that time have no recollection of earlier state associations.  George Lehigh, who worked for several years with George Scherer (a founder of MGMA and of MMGMA) says that "Minnesota was the first."  It's not a critical question--but hopefully the question will stimulate dialogue on the history of state associations generally.

Minnesota membership in NACM totaled 15 people in 1951.

The 25th Annual Conference of MGMA was held on October 28-31, 1951 in Biloxi, Miss.  John Rowland of Trinity Hospital and Clinic in Little Rock, Ark., was President.  This was the first conference to attract a sizable number of exhibitors.

Significant association activity included:

• The conversion of membership in NACM from the clinic to the manager;
  
• The American College of Clinic Managers was first discussed on December 17, 1951; and
  
• The Western and Southern Sections were going strong.  The Western Section had a continuing cost survey.  They also reported that some western clinics had adopted a single insurance report.
  
  

Frederick Wood Jr. delivered a report of the Committee on Education which must certainly be a landmark paper in the history of MGMA.  The committee included Clayton M. Bond, Sheboygan, Wis.; John H. Clark, Wheeling, W. Va.; Katherine Marshall, Moore-White Clinic, Los Angeles; Arthur A. Johnson, Springer Clinic, Tulsa, Okla.; Gerhard Hartmann, professor and Director of the Program in Hospital Administration, Graduate College, State University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa.  The full report can be found in the proceedings of the 1951 NACM conference, volume III, page 158-166.

There were other substantial committee reports at this conference.  The Committee on Employment and Placement delivered a report by M. W. Allen.  This committee functioned for some years attempting to aid the process of locating and relocating clinic managers.

The report of the Committee on Governmental Relations chaired by George W. Scherer featured a rather stinging rebuke of the intervention of the federal government in which it was noted that the "prosperous farming community in southern Minnesota" with a population of about 19,000 people would have a share of slightly more than $5,300,000 of the federal government's obligations since 1945 for foreign loans and aid.  The report speculated on how many educational and health care facilities could be developed in Mankato if that money were in fact available to the community.

Chairman Spencer Boise of the Quain-Remstad Clinic in Bismark delivered a report from the Committee on Prepayment Plans.  The report noted that the number of plans nationally had grown from 77 identified in 1948 to 109 in 1950.  The enrollments (not the subscribers) were shown to be 1,000,000 in 1943; 5,000,000 in 1946; 10,600,000 in 1948; 14,600,000 in 1949 and 19,900,000 in 1950.

Clayton Bond and a committee had developed proceedings of all meetings from 1926 to date.  These proceedings sold for $25, and later sold for $50.  Five hundred of them were prepared and eventually all sold.  MGMA Library Director Barbara Hamilton, tells us the proceedings as such were discontinued in the early 1960s with the minutes of the board serving thereafter as the official documentation of the conference.

According to Edward Stevens' history, growing pains were showing up again in complaints about too formally organized education programs, and not enough nuts and bolts.  The Education Committee prepared a series of seminars.  Other subjects discussed included:

• Were clinics covered under the Fair Labor Standards Act?;
  
• Retirement programs, income distribution, buildings, etc.;
  
• Clinics were developing insurance departments to relieve the doctor of some forms work; and
  
• Repayment.
  
  

Ten Minnesota clinics were represented at the NACM Annual Conference in Biloxi this year including Mankato, Mayo, Nicollet, Duluth, Earl, St. Paul, Worthington, Winona, Northwestern (Crookston) and Adams (Hibbing).

The East Main Clinic in Anoka and the St. Louis Park Medical Center were founded in 1951.