Back From ACOG

Hi OBGYN.net'ers,

Just back from ACOG and ready for the spring Ob/Gyn meeting cycle to break. As fun as it is to travel and see all the old friends, it gets pretty exhausting! Looking forward to a lazy summer with some non-business related travel thrown in that includes drinks involving umbrellas.

This year at ACOG we all noticed the huge amount of aesthetic and cosmetogynecology companies exhibiting at the meeting. This has been true at AAGL and other meetings recently and seems to be a real trend in the industry that bears watching. Although there are a lot of hurdles to overcome in shifting to this business model, it is lucrative, and the patients certainly seem to want it. Time will tell.

The anti-abortion demonstrators were out as usual, but they did not seem to have the numbers or vigor of the groups in years gone by. Maybe just an artifact of the laid back San Diego weather and lifestyle. I remember them being a lot more organized and vocal last year in Washington DC.

Word in the exhibit hall was that attendance was down from 3,800 in 2006 to 3,400 in 2007. This has been an ongoing downward spiral over the last five years with a lot of meeting attendance seeming to be centered these days on sub-specialty meetings. Everything just seemed smaller, attendance, booth sizes, the excitement level, the celebrity guests, the number of social gatherings...However, Dr Ed Zabrek and Mark Graves put on what I understand was an excellent day of education on all the choices out there for electronic medical records. Most of the doctors I spoke to thought the clinical presentations were very good and well organized.

There were so many new companies, and so many old companies either out of the market, acquired or missing in action that it hardly seemed like the same meeting of ten years ago when it filled two full exhibit halls in Las Vegas. I guess "Elvis" has left the building.

Best,
Roberta Speyer
OBGYN.net President