Bylaws – Changes to Membership and More

by Kelly Bennett, NAMPI Board President

I feel like I have had a lot of opportunity to read our bylaws lately. And I really am appreciative of the work of the bylaws committee that was convened after last year’s conference. John Slade (UT) helped lead that group to review proposed amendments, make additional proposed amendments, and provide clarification or edits to the current bylaws.  I am sure I should know all of the people who were on that committee, and by not naming you please know that doesn’t mean we don’t really appreciate what you did. There is just so much work that needs to be done and not enough time for us to get it all done.  So to John and all of the members of the committee – THANK YOU! 

It isn’t often that the NAMPI business meeting will have bylaw amendments on the agenda. In fact the last amendments were more than a decade ago.  The amendments, as proposed for adoption, will soon be available with track changes so that any member can see what is being proposed. I want to summarize some of the changes that I think everyone should be aware of before we get to that business meeting.

• We prepared some preamble-type language that recognizes how we are all organizationally different so that we are clear on what we mean by the state program integrity operations versus other state agencies. This also allows us to be clear that we are trying to designate one primary point of contact for each state or territory. This NAMPI Program Integrity Leader or Program Integrity Point of Contact is the person the board would go to if there was any question about any NAMPI business.
• We are proposing some changes to membership. Notably, making a clear distinction between the program integrity personnel and other state personnel, other government agencies, and then non-governmental organizations.   The distinction for state agencies is not intended to distinguish the single state agency and maybe a state IG office that also serves in program integrity functions, but rather to distinguish state program integrity, state Medicaid fraud control unit, and then other state agencies that do any other jobs and may want to be members of our organization (one year we had education personnel from a state).
• We are proposing some clarifications about voting — particularly about the timing of how or when someone can be nominated to be on the ballot for an office. There are logistical issues with having the ballot prepared that make it difficult if we have nominations right up until the point of the vote.  There is also some clarification that only state agency members can be on the board. This is just to be clear that if someone leaves state service while they’re on the board they can’t stay on the board.  (As a maybe not-so-interesting note, I keep referring to the board as the board, but the bylaws refer to it as the executive committee.)
• The committee made lots of recommendations for clarification or simply better wording of the existing bylaws. I am not going to summarize those all here; you can read them for yourself soon. 
• The final item I’m going to discuss is related to membership fees. Historically, registering for the conference made you a member. We have chosen not to raise the registration fee as much as we really need to for the past few years (to keep up with the rising costs) so that we can instead shift to a membership fee that is standalone and separate from conference attendance. I know that I am very fortunate to be able to send several of my employees to the conference. But then that means only those several are association members. They are the only ones who would get the newsletter and access to the website. Starting in 2024 (when webinars will be free to members) they would be the only ones who would have access to our webinars and our other resources that we make available for our members. We have attempted to come up with a nominal fee for membership. Our hope is that this is something each state or territory can budget for and purchase membership for all of their personnel. The thought was this was a better way to make sure association membership was available to all of our personnel program integrity personnel while also keeping the registration for the conference as reasonable as possible.
  • Admittedly, the hope is that all program integrity units will register all of their personnel to be members; and maybe so would our MFCUs and HHS and others; and many of the vendors we work with would also have many of their personnel who interact with us become members.   If we are able to create some revenue from the membership, then hopefully we can continue to keep the registration fees for the conference lower.  This also will ensure that all of your program integrity personnel have access to the great NAMPI resources.