Chairperson's File
Blog posts from 2025 AHA Board Chair Tina Freese Decker, president and CEO of Corewell Health, and past chairs.
The only acceptable number of avoidable patient harms is zero. At Ponca City (Okla.) Medical Center, all hospital staff are working to achieve 100% of patient safety goals. The 140-bed hospital has used best practices and tools from its participation in the AHA/HRET Hospital Engagement Network.鈥
Building a culture of health means ensuring all people have the opportunity to live productive, healthier lives. Hospitals and health care systems have an important role in this work. Key for hospitals is conducting a community health needs assessment to pinpoint community priorities and identify鈥
Working toward the Triple Aim of better care, better health and lower cost means achieving the goal for all patients. A new resource, Equity of Care: A Toolkit for Eliminating Health Care Disparities, gathers best practices in one place. This toolkit outlines a framework for improving quality of鈥
The AHA/HRET HEN project ended in December 2014, but quality improvement work continues at hospitals: Multidisciplinary teams work to advance improvement efforts to reach their quality and patient safety goals.
The Leadership Toolkit for Redefining the H: Engaging Trustees and Communities, including the report and separate tools and resources sections, is available to download for free at AHA.org.
HPOE.org has additional resources on health care transformation.
By focusing on preventive care and health promotion, hospitals are catalyzing change in their communities. Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Azle is one such example. The 36-bed hospital, part of Texas Health Resources, determined that a large number of its patients' emergency room visits were鈥
University Hospitals, Cleveland, is advancing multiple care equity initiatives. The over 2,000-bed, $3 billion health care system has used the AHA's Diversity and Disparities Benchmark Study of U.S. Hospitals. Minorities comprise 26% of UH board seats, compared with 14% nationally. Minorities鈥
Change can be uncomfortable. But no matter how sophisticated, hospitals and health care systems need to progress鈥攖o redefine, change and be relevant. Hospital teams are working to find better ways to provide high-quality care at lower costs to improve the health of people in their communities鈥
Building a culture that is inclusive and founded on principles of diversity was a 鈥渒ey destination point鈥 defined several years ago by the board of CHRISTUS Health.
Identifying solutions to reduce hospital-acquired conditions. Working to spread this knowledge to other hospitals and health care providers. Plus, rigorous strategic planning, initiative implementation, data collection and analysis, and continuous assessment: This describes the work of the Hospital鈥