Articles
Governance Effectiveness, Care Delivery
Remembering Karen Gardner
Karen Gardner was a classy person. I don’t use that term lightly. You can be smart. You can be talented. You can be highly accomplished in your career. But it takes a truly classy person to be all those things and face the world with Karen’s conspicuous sense of humor and compassion. To do so while bearing the relentless weight of a disease like multiple scleroris for more than four decades challenges comprehension.
Financial Oversight, Care Delivery, Strategic Planning, Workforce
AHA Annual Membership Meeting set for May
Conference
AHA to bring together, policy, health care leaders
Leaders from Congress, policy groups and health care will come together May 7–10 for the American Hospital Association Annual Membership Meeting in Washington, D.C. This year’s theme is “Advancing Health in America.” Media big names slated to participate include Kelly O’Donnell and David Gregory of NBC, political analysts Nicolle Wallace of MSNBC and Bret Baier of Fox News, and Frank Sesno, former CNN Washington bureau chief. Former Sens.
Leadership, Care Delivery
Make it so
“Don’t wish your life away,” my grandmother always admonished us kids whenever we were feeling antsy for Christmas to get here or summer vacation to kick in or — not long after the Fourth of July — for summer vacation to hurry up and get over with and the first day of school to finally arrive. “Be careful, or you’ll wish your life away,” she’d say, and we’d look at each other and roll our eyes. Time moved slowly for us then.
Care Delivery, Quality & Patient Safety
Transplants just keep rising
Record Number of Transplants
33,606: Number of organ transplants performed in the U.S. in 2016
8.5%: Increase over 2015
19.8%: Increase since 2012
Source: United Network for Organ Sharing, January 2017
Contents
Features
8 Cover story
Nurses on Board
With a wealth of patient care experience, nurses can bring a much-needed perspective to the hospital board. Hospitals with RNs as trustees have richer board discussions and improved performance in both quality and safety, as well as higher retention rates for staff nurses. | Susan Reinhard
12 Design
Soothing Spaces
Cover: Predictive Analytics
Cover
20 Predictive analytics
Hospitals now have the data to understand how an individual is at risk for everything from infection to a dangerous reaction to certain drugs. But putting the data to practical use is another question. Here’s how one hospital did just that.
By Rebecca Vesely
26 The Interview: AHA’s
chief nursing officer
Table of Contents
Features
Cover story
8 Health Care Calling
Eugene Woods relishes his role as 2017 chair of the American Hospital Association at a time of dramatic change in health care. The CEO of Carolinas HealthCare System describes the AHA's strategies for meeting today's challenges head-on. | Marty Stempniak
Population Health
13 A Place to Call Home
Affordable Care Act, Governance Effectiveness, Legislation and Legislative Advocacy
The work hospital board members do
It takes a special kind of person to volunteer to serve on the board of an American hospital these days. As we’ve noted here innumerable times, health care is in the midst of a top-to-bottom transformation. While we don’t know precisely how the dust will settle, we do know, without a doubt, that the momentum for transformation is too great for anyone, on either end of the political spectrum, to stop — whatever the fate of the Affordable Care Act.
Progress Against Infections
Progress Against Infections
Health care-associated infections had significantly decreased by 2014, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention final report on the Winnable Battles project, which was launched in 2010 to achieve certain public health targets.