Earlier this week, the Hospital Council Board of Trustees held its first in-person meeting since January 2020. While the board continued to meet regularly yet virtually throughout the pandemic, it was great to have both our current board members and our new incoming board members in-person for this occasion.
The board meeting was held in conjunction with the Hospital Quality Institute’s Annual Conference, which allowed members to engage on critically important topics such as finding joy in the workplace, strategies to improve health equity and hear sobering and inspirational real-world examples about our collective journey to a create a safer health care experience through a culture of safety.
While the board meeting featured a discussion led by Vanderbilt University’s Dr. Gerald Hickson on steps on to create a culture of safety and intentional, crucial conversations with all hospital teams, the focus was on advocacy and the issues that are impacting your hospitals.
We discussed the new Office of Health Care Affordability, which included the history, organizational structure, impacted health care segments, timeline, and what hospitals can do to advance affordability discussions in both the legislative and regulatory areas
We looked back on the local, regional, state, and federal advocacy issues your hospitals are currently facing and what we can expect in 2023. This included the political and policy environment we will be seeing in 2023, with a significant number of new members in both the state Senate and the Assembly.
We discussed Medi-Cal reform, the seismic mandate, minimum wage initiatives, behavioral health, housing, workforce development, and more. These issues continue to be top of mind as we close out 2022 and head into 2023.
In addition, PG&E CEO Patti Poppe joined our meeting for a chance to hear directly from hospitals that have been impacted by power issues. Our partnership with PG&E over the past several years has helped to significantly reduce the severity and duration of public safety power shutoffs. We heard from three hospitals – Adventist St. Helena, Sutter Lakeside, and Mark Twain Medical Center on how their power resiliency challenges have improved due to the CHA/Hospital Council partnership with PG&E. Although there is still more work to be done, we have made great progress and PG&E renewed its commitment to hospitals as essential providers.
Finally, we celebrated our success in the virtual environment, acknowledged the significant financial and policy challenges that lie ahead, and committed to collectively work together and work hard on the numerous issues facing our individual hospitals and the entire hospital field in 2023.
Hospital Council and CHA are proud to work with and work for our great hospitals that provide outstanding care to all Californians!