Thank you to everyone who joined us last week at Campbell’s Resort in Chelan for our 40th Annual Rural Hospital Leadership Conference! It was a pleasure to see all of you there, and as always, we truly enjoyed spending this time with you, catching up and of course discussing the unique opportunities and challenges of rural health care, this year paying particular attention to health care as viewed from various points of view.
If you joined in us in Chelan and haven’t already taken our survey, please do so here!
This year we had some wonderfully engaging speakers join us, including Rich Harwood (President & Founder of The Harwood Institute), Harold Miller (President and CEO of the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform) and John Wiesman (Washington State Secretary of Health). Our sessions spanned a diverse array of issues, including community engagement, equity of care and recruiting for rural practices. The slides from most of these presentations are now available here on the WSHA website.
Our social events were again a high point, with the fun photos and brochures from decades of past conferences at the ice cream social and lots of sunshine at the social hour and barbecue on the beach.
Just spending time along the beautiful shores of Chelan is a pleasure, but this conference is also an incredibly important time for us to work together and chart the ways that we can improve rural health care in our state. Our goal as an organization is to make health care better by improving the patient experience, improving the health of the larger community and reducing the per capita cost of care. This is the Triple Aim of health care, and it’s especially important in our rural communities, where rural hospitals and health systems serve as the safety net to make sure our residents get the care they need and keep our residents healthy.
We want to thank you for taking the time to join us for this conference. We hope it was as fun as it was helpful and informative, and we’re already looking forward to seeing you in Chelan next year!
Sincerely,
Cassie Sauer
Executive Vice President, WSHA
Ben Lindekugel
Executive Director, AWPHD
