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The AHA is eager to recognize excellence among America’s hospitals and health systems. We appreciate the work you do to help patients, and recognizing that work helps foster success across the field. At last month’s AHA Leadership Summit in San Diego, we presented awards to more formally acknowledge the great work going on in areas ranging from palliative care to community engagement.

For example, the Circle of Life Award was presented to innovative and effective programs that surpass expectations for palliative and end-of-life care. In central Kentucky, Bluegrass Care Navigators provides hospice as well as transitional care, palliative care, grief care, a private-duty nurse program, and an adult day health care program. They’ve found this approach successfully helps patients in their area – one that has high levels of chronic illness and poverty. In one program, readmissions dropped 37%.

In southern California, three organizations – Providence Little Company of Mary Medical Center Torrance, Providence TrinityCare Hospice & TrinityKids Care, and the Providence Institute for Human Caring – partnered to create a comprehensive inpatient and outpatient palliative care approach that provides “whole person care” for every patient and makes advance planning and a palliative care approach routine. Whole person care helps people make thoughtful choices about how they interact with the health care system, particularly when dealing with a chronic or life-limiting illness.

These are just a few of more than a dozen organizations recognized. Don’t miss the , with more information on all the winners.