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America’s hospitals and health systems are dedicated to protecting their patients and workforce against cyber attacks that can disrupt patient care and erode privacy by the loss of personal health care data.

Rick PollackPresident and CEO���������� Association

The ���������� Association (AHA) today announced the team from Queen’s North Hawaiʻi Community Hospital, a 35-bed rural acute care hospital located in Waimea (Kamuela) on Hawai‘i Island, as the 2023 recipient of the Rural Hospital Leadership Team Award.

While the AHA appreciates inclusion of a two-year delay on DSH cuts, we have been very clear regarding the harm that would be done to our nation’s hospitals if so-called site-neutral cuts to Medicare were adopted. We have strongly urged that those cuts be eliminated from this legislation.

The ���������� Association (AHA) today announced that Melinda (Mindy) Hatton, AHA’s general counsel and secretary, will retire after a long and distinguished career in the association and legal world.

Today, the ���������� Association, AHIP, the Alliance of Community Health Plans, the American Medical Association, and Kaiser Permanente announced the Common Health Coalition: Together for Public Health.

The AHA is concerned that CMS has again finalized an inadequate update to hospital payments. Today's increase for outpatient hospitals of only 3.1% comes in spite of persistent financial headwinds facing the field.

Following years of litigation and a unanimous Supreme Court win, the AHA is very pleased that 340B hospitals finally will be reimbursed in full for what HHS unlawfully withheld from them for five years.

The ���������� Association (AHA), joined by the Texas Hospital Association, Texas Health Resources, and United Regional Health Care System, today sued the federal government to bar enforcement of an unlawful, harmful, and counterproductive rule that has upended hospitals’ and health systems’ ability to share health care information with the communities they serve, analyze their own websites to enhance accessibility, and improve public health.

The nation’s hospital systems overwhelmingly meet patient expectations when it comes to receiving care reveals a new national poll from Morning Consult and released by the ���������� Association (AHA).

Even in the face of a once-in-a-century pandemic, all hospitals, regardless of ownership type, continued to provide a comprehensive range of benefits, programs and essential services to their communities.

The ���������� Association (AHA) is launching a new TV ad urging Congress to protect patient access to care by rejecting billions of dollars in reductions to hospital care. So-called site neutral policies could cause more hospitals to shut their doors, especially impacting patients from rural and low-income communities who could lose access to vital services like trauma and maternal care.

Caregivers and other health care professionals are the heart of our nation’s health care system and deserve an environment free from violence. Hospitals are places of healing, which is why they are using a range of innovative strategies to create safer spaces for their workers and patients, including focusing on technology and training to mitigate risk to redesigning facilities and workflow processes to prioritize safety and reimagining relationships with hospital security and others to support prevention and crisis response.

The AHA strongly believes that a skilled, caring workforce is integral to delivery of high quality, safe care. At the same time, safe staffing is about much more than a number. We are concerned that in proposing a one-size-fits-all numerical staffing threshold, CMS would remove the role of clinical judgment in staffing facilities, and inadvertently create patient access challenges across the health care system.

The ���������� Association (AHA) has elected eight new members to its Board of Trustees for three-year terms beginning Jan. 1, 2024. The Board of Trustees is the highest policymaking body of the AHA and has ultimate authority for the governance and management of its directions and finances.

A new “report” from Elevance Health — the large, for-profit commercial insurer formerly known as Anthem — draws absurd conclusions about the impact of health care systems on access to care, cost and quality. Of greatest irony is that while the national health plan behemoth, which dominates many insurer markets, is pointing fingers at the actual health care providers serving patients, it is pocketing record profits.

The AHA is deeply concerned with CMS’ woefully inadequate inpatient and long-term care hospital payment updates. The agency continues to finalize rate increases that are not commensurate with the near decades-high inflation and increased costs for labor, equipment, drugs and supplies that hospitals across the country are experiencing.

Once again, Patient Rights Advocate has put out a report that blatantly misconstrues, ignores, and mischaracterizes hospitals’ compliance with federal price transparency regulations. The AHA has repeatedly debunked point-by-point Patient Rights Advocate’s intentionally misleading “reports” on price transparency, including earlier this year in a blog and op-ed.

The ���������� Association’s (AHA) Next Generation Leaders Fellowship, focused on empowering leaders to bring about real and lasting change in health care, announced its latest class of fellows consisting of 43 individuals, including 12 Age-Friendly Fellows supported by The John A. Hartford Foundation.

The ���������� Association (AHA) Board of Trustees has elected Christina (Tina) M. Freese Decker, president & chief executive officer of Corewell Health, based in Michigan, as its Chair-elect Designate. Freese Decker will be Chair-elect in 2024 and become the 2025 Chair of the AHA, the top-elected official of the national organization that represents America’s hospitals and health systems and works to advance health in America.