The Board is committed to improving the services our College offers to you, with a particular focus on communication.

Following each face-to-face Board meeting we will now issue an email to all Fellows and trainees, to summarise significant items we have discussed.

We also want to hear from you and receive feedback.

On 11 July, we held our most recent Meet the Board event at Westmead Hospital. Directors welcomed the valuable opportunity to hear from Fellows and trainees.

We took on board your suggestions and are implementing measures to address some of the issues you raised.

We have now had productive meetings with members at a number of training sites, with encouraging feedback received on various topics.

We held our most recent face-to-face Board meeting the following day in Sydney on 12 July.

Two ACNC representatives initially attended to discuss next steps following the Board’s signing of the voluntary compliance agreement, and to answer questions from Directors.

We intend to release a full and comprehensive message to members once a Governance professional has been appointed as part of the compliance agreement.

We were briefed that the RACP’s financial position at the end of May 2019 was strong with a year-to-date operating surplus of over $4 million.

This is mainly due to the delay in timing of project expenditure scheduled for the second half of the year, including the significant workflow supporting our Educational Renewal Program and other essential IT upgrades.

We have approved a working party on computer-based testing and Divisional examinations will be paper-based for the foreseeable future.

Members may recall the Board has established a College Governance Committee to review the College’s constitution and key bylaws, in collaboration with other College bodies.

The Board has now appointed the following members to that Committee which is chaired by an external independent appointee Mr Rob Ryan:

• Professor Maree O’Keefe
• Dr Richard Russell
• Dr Steve Flecknoe-Brown
• Dr John Wyeth

We reviewed the operation of the Advanced Training Selection and Matching (ATSM) program supported by the College.

We consider ATSM to be a strategic service and will continue to offer and further refine it in 2020, in collaboration with key stakeholders across Australia.

We approved the Physicians Health and Wellbeing Strategy 2019-2022 which has been under development for the past six months and has been endorsed by the Physician Health and Wellbeing Reference Group in June 2019.

Rollout of this strategy will begin later this year.

Finally, we invited the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Committee (ATSIHC) and Māori Health Committee (MHC) to meet with us to discuss their priority objectives, including their Justice and Equity Statement of Principles.

We look forward to your continued feedback and suggestions on how to best serve our membership.