CEO Messages

Next week, the Hospital Council Board of Directors will meet for the first time in 2026, kicking off what promises to be a challenging and consequential year for hospitals across California.  

Hospitals need help. And last week, hospital leaders made sure Washington, D.C., heard that message loud and clear. 

“I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring.” – David Bowie 

This week, I had the honor of welcoming more than 200 behavioral health care professionals to the California Hospital Association’s annual Behavioral Health Symposium. Over two days, we dug into the hard questions shaping California’s behavioral health future: how we build and retain a workforce to meet soaring patient demand, whether infrastructure investments will truly expand access to care, and what it takes to provide empathetic, person-centered support to a population whose needs are growing faster than the system built to serve them. 

“We must find time to stop and thank the people who make a difference in our lives.” 
John F. Kennedy 

It’s an old cliché that who you know often trumps what you know. Hospital Council’s Corporate Associate Membership programs help with both.  

It’s scarcely been three months since the One Big Beautiful Bill Act was signed into law, but its anticipated $911 billion cuts in Medicaid spending over the next decade have already started reshaping how California thinks about spending. Consider:

In late September, hospital leaders gathered in Lake Tahoe for the Hospital Council’s annual meeting, hosted in partnership with the Hospital Quality Institute. Before launching into a comprehensive program of patient safety and quality improvement discussions, the Hospital Council board convened. This annual event is a critical touchpoint for the board to plan for the year ahead — planning that has never been more important. 

Earlier this month, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) issued draft guidelines that would actively disincentivize utilities from pursuing long-term undergrounding programs — a direction that is dangerously out of touch with the realities facing California’s businesses, communities, and hospitals. 

Change is nothing new in health care. From technological innovations to shifting patient needs, hospitals have constant reasons to evolve. That ability to adapt is taking on a new urgency in the aftermath of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which only compounds the financial challenges hospitals face.