Ready to Go: OTO Forum Comes to Louisville

Disclaimer: I am an avid user of AI companion tools. Most of my writings incorporate some form of AI assistance.

Rahul K. Shah, MD, MBA
AAO-HNS/F Executive Vice President and CEOIf you attended our Annual Meeting in Indianapolis this past fall, you remember the energy. You remember the rally cry: "Fired up?" And you remember the answer that echoed through the opening session: "Ready to go!"

That momentum hasn't faded. It's accelerating. And I'm writing today to personally invite you to carry that energy forward to Louisville, Kentucky, March 20-21, for OTO Forum 2026.

For the past two years, the OTO Forum has been held in Alexandria, Virginia: the headquarters of your Academy. Those meetings were successful by any measure, with hundreds of attendees. But as we reflected on our Strategic Plan and its mandate to unify our specialty, we kept returning to a fundamental question: Are we making it easy for our members to engage with us?

The answer required honesty. Expecting every otolaryngologist to travel to our headquarters (at an arguably high financial cost) assumes a level of access and availability that doesn't reflect the realities of your practices and lives. So, we made a deliberate choice: OTO Forum is going to the people.

Louisville offers remarkable accessibility. It's well-connected by air. Several academic medical centers call the region home. Hundreds of private practitioners are within easy driving distance. We're not relocating to an arbitrary city; instead, we are strategically positioning ourselves where our members already are.

Here's a truth I've come to appreciate deeply in my role: The artificial division between “academic medicine” and “business of medicine” is false. Clinical care has no boundaries in the modern era, as patients prioritize outcomes. The same principle applies to practice operations. Credentialing, contracts, payer negotiations, revenue cycle management, workforce planning—these challenges don't discriminate between academic and private practice settings. These issues are as crucial to academic medical centers as they are to private practices.

If you lead a department, you're in the business of medicine. If you manage an academic practice plan, you're in the business of medicine. If you're navigating the complexities of hospital employment, you're in the business of medicine. OTO Forum is for all of us.

Last year's OTO Forum exceeded every expectation. We ran out of exhibit space. The ballroom was packed. The engagement was unprecedented. Our members told us loudly and clearly: This content matters—for all otolaryngologists.

That response validated what we believed from the start—otolaryngologists are hungry for practical, applicable knowledge about running and sustaining practices. You want to learn from peers who've navigated similar challenges. You want connections that extend beyond clinical expertise into operational excellence.

I've written before about the power of gathering—how our Annual Meeting creates spontaneous conversations and unexpected collaborations. OTO Forum offers something similar but more intimate. The smaller scale means deeper engagement. The focused content means shared language. The camaraderie means you're not alone in facing these challenges.

Your Academy exists to serve you. And sometimes that service means creating space for you to breathe, connect, and remember why you chose this specialty in the first place.

Come fired up. Leave ready to go.

I'll see you there.