As ASA Treasurer, it has been my responsibility and privilege to serve as the principal steward of our society's resources for the past three years. Unfortunately, recent months have brought previously unimagined challenges to that task. What exactly are these challenges, and what actions are we taking in response? More importantly, will the challenges be temporary, with a return to ASA's status quo? Or will the pandemic accelerate the trends we've been seeing for the past few years, driving ASA toward a new and different business model?
As a specialty, anesthesiology has been particularly hard-hit by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. While some ASA members faced the disease head on in overwhelmed ICUs, many more suffered a severe loss of income when elective surgery shut down. I didn't administer a single anesthetic for seven weeks. ASA did a magnificent job of disseminating emerging knowledge and new practice guidelines related to COVID-19 but...