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Mark your calendars to attend the Critical Issues Summit for Hospital Boards on Aug. 26-27 at the Airport Hilton in Wichita. Ron Galloway, our keynote speaker, will discuss the competitive force posed by Wal-Mart on the health care industry. Other topics to be covered include high performing boards, health reform and state-specific issues. An optional pre-session on Thursday will discuss hospital market shares. Early-bird roundtables on Friday morning will allow participants to enjoy breakfast and networking among your peers.
Wal-Mart and the Future of Health Care
From in-store health care clinics to eyeglasses, from flu shots to urgent care, Wal-Mart has its designs on leveraging its 4,000 stores into the largest force in American health care. In 10 short years, Wal-Mart has become the second largest force in optometry. Their $4 prescription plan changed the face of the prescription industry. During this session at the Critical Issues Summit for Hospital Boards, Ron Galloway will discuss this new competitive force on the horizon and what it means for Kansas hospitals. Galloway directed the noted documentary film, Why Wal-Mart Works and Why That Makes Some People Crazy, a free market look at Wal-Mart. He is a frequent speaker on a variety of business topics, including innovations in business technology, and writes on technology and business for The Huffington Post.
Becoming a High Performing Board in a Post Reform World
Health care reform has passed, and hospital boards are not only faced with just understanding the implications, but ensuring that they are positioned as a governing body to best respond and lead their organization into the future. During her session the Critical Issues Summit for Hospital Boards, Maureen Swan will highlight the key functions of the board, characteristics of high performing boards, and how reform will require boards to continue to measure and improve their own performance. Tools like board assessments, job member descriptions and committee charters will be discussed and reviewed. Swan is a principal with MedTrend, Inc., a firm she founded in 1998 that specializes in strategic planning and analysis for the health care industry. She has more than 25 years of sales, marketing and strategic planning management experience.
How to Keep Patients in Town: Answers to the Biggest Strategic Challenge
For most community or rural-based hospitals, a key strategic challenge is keeping patients in town for care. The pre-summit session at the Critical Issues Summit, led by Maureen Swan, will focus on the key elements that drive improvement in a hospital's "in-town" market share and provide a model to assess current opportunities and improve preference and usage of the local hospital. The board plays a key role in helping the town thrive and supporting strategies to ensure long-term growth and viability. This session will highlight the role of the board in meeting a critical strategic challenge.
The Critical Issues Summit for Hospital Boards will be Aug. 26-27 at the Airport Hilton in Wichita. The brochure and online registration are available on the KHA Web site. Questions can be directed to the KHA Education Department at (785) 233-7436.
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The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act make significant changes to employer-sponsored group health plans. Some of the changes are already effective, and many more will become effective for calendar-year plans as of Jan. 1, 2011.
We encourage trustees (especially if you also are an employer) to join us on Aug. 17 for a Webinar that will help employers understand how health care reform will affect health plans and provide an overview of health care reform, with a focus on what needs to be done this year and next. Speakers are Ken Mason and Julia Vander Weele with the law firm of Spencer Fane Britt & Browne LLP. Both are members of the firm's employee benefits group and have extensive experience in working with employer health plans.
Trustees are encouraged to invite local employers to their hospital to participate in this program. This is a unique opportunity for your hospital and community employers to work together to build understanding among the leaders in your community.
The brochure and online registration are available on the KHA Web site. Questions can be directed to the KHA Education Department at (785) 233-7436.
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 The Kansas Hospital Association, in conjunction with The Walker Company Healthcare Consulting, LLC, is offering dozens of affordable and topical governance education programs that may be easily downloaded from our Web site. This new service was developed in response to member requests for brief governance education programs that may be presented and discussed at board meetings.
Trustee Foundations™, Governance Education On Call 24/7/365, provides you with access to timely and relevant governance education programs when you need them - any time, any day. You simply click on the "Trustee Foundations" link on the Trustee page of our Web site, review the program topics and descriptions, select those you want to purchase and check out. You'll then be able to immediately download a self-running PowerPoint Show with audio, a detailed BoardBrief handout and other supporting materials, and questions for board discussion following the program.
Individual programs are affordably priced at $169 per program. In addition, a discount of 10 percent is offered for purchase of five to nine programs in one order, and a discount of 20 percent is offered when 10 or more programs are purchased in one order.
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The dates and locations for the 2010 fall Kansas Hospital Association District Meetings have been set. Note: All meetings will begin at 9 a.m. and end by 1 p.m. with the exception of the Northwest District Meeting, which will be from 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Lunch will be provided. Register for the meeting of your choice online or by contacting Susan Cunningham at (785) 233-7436.
Northeast
District
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Sept. 21
9 a.m. - 1 p.m.
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St. Francis Health Center
Auditorium
1700 SW Seventh
Topeka |
Southeast
District
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Sept. 22
9 a.m. - 1 p.m.
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Girard Medical Center
Education Room
302 N. Hospital Drive
Girard |
South Central
District
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Sept. 23
9 a.m. - 1 p.m.
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Via Christi Health
Conference Room 2035
929 N. St. Francis
Wichita |
North Central
District
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Sept. 24
9 a.m. - 1 p.m.
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Salina Regional Health Center
Conference Room #7
Santa Fe Campus
400 S. Santa Fe
Salina |
Northwest
District
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Sept. 27
11:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.
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NW Kansas Educational Service Center
703 W. 2nd
Oakley |
Southwest
District
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Sept. 28
9 a.m. - 1 p.m.
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St. Catherine Hospital
Classroom B
401 E. Spruce
Garden City |
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The final rules for meaningful use were released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services this month. At the same time, the Office of National Coordinator for Health Information Technology released a final rule that sets certification criteria, standards and implementation specifications for electronic health records technology that included only requirements for stage one through 2012. On the state level, there were numerous press reports about KHA's collaboration with the Kansas Medical Society and the local health information organizations in Kansas City (the Bi-state Health Information Exchange for the Greater Kansas City) and Wichita (Wichita Health Information Exchange). Our intent is to collaborate toward the development of a statewide HIE. More information on HIT can be found on the KHA Web site.
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Earlier this summer, Kansas Gov. Mark Parkinson joined a bipartisan contingent of governors from Pennsylvania, Michigan, Maryland, New York, Washington, Illinois, California, Colorado and Connecticut to urge Congress to extend the Federal Medicaid Assistance Percentage, or FMAP, which is scheduled to expire at the end of the year.
Thirty states assumed that the money would be extended when planning their budgets for 2011, but the measure is now stalled in Congress. In Kansas, the extra money amounts to about $130 million dollars.
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This month, the Hospital Quality Alliance made available, on the Hospital Compare Web site, data on the quality of emergency care for heart attack/chest pain patients, outpatient surgical care and imaging services for Medicare patients. The Web site also includes updated data (from July 2006 to June 2009) on hospital readmission and mortality rates for heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia patients.
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The Kansas Healthcare Collaborative is pleased to announce the official launch of the Immunization of Health Care Workers Project and Toolkit. In an effort to reduce the spread of influenza and to protect the health of both patients and health care workers, KHC recommends that all health care workers, including medical staff, receive the seasonal influenza immunization.
Studies show influenza causes an average of 36,000 deaths and over 200,000 hospitalizations in the United States each year. Furthermore, health care-associated transmission of influenza has been documented among many patient populations in a variety of clinical settings, and infections have been linked epidemiologically to unvaccinated health care workers. With recent increased awareness of influenza due to H1N1, there is no better time than the present to strongly promote immunization of all health care workers.
KHC is pleased to provide hospitals with a toolkit to support their efforts to implement evidence-based practices and improve influenza immunization of health care workers. The Immunization of Health Care Workers – Seasonal Influenza Toolkit is available on the KHC Web site. Links to the KHC Web site and the toolkit also can be found on the KHA Web site and the KMS Web site.
KHC will distribute hard copies of the toolkit to hospitals on Aug.16. For more information, please contact Tonya Crawford, KHC program coordinator at (785) 235-0763.
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The Kansas Hospital Association would like to request your nominations for three awards that will be presented during the 2010 KHA Annual Convention. The Charles S. Billings Award is the top honor given by the Kansas Hospital Association. The annual award recognizes a hospital leader for his/her lifetime of service and continuing contribution to the health care of Kansas. The Billings Award was established in 1971 to honor Charles S. Billings' dedication and years of service to Kansans. We encourage you to consider completing a nomination form. Materials must be postmarked to KHA no later than Aug. 1.
The Distinguished Health Care Advocate Award recognizes those individuals, organizations or groups who provide an exemplary contribution to the health and well-being of the people of Kansas through their leadership in the political or policy arena. The Distinguished Health Care Advocate Award provides members of KHA the opportunity to recognize those who work on our behalf from outside our ranks. We encourage you to consider completing a nomination form. Materials must be postmarked to KHA no later than Aug. 1.
The Donald A. Wilson Visionary Award was established to honor Donald A. Wilson who served as president of the Kansas Hospital Association from 1982 to 2004. This award recognizes hospital-related individuals who have made an outstanding, innovative contribution to health care delivery, health care financing or initiatives that improve the health and clinical outcomes of their community. The Donald A. Wilson Visionary Award provides members of KHA the opportunity to recognize individuals who have been a change agent in the hospital industry. We encourage you to consider completing a nomination form. Materials must be postmarked to KHA no later than Aug. 1.
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