Summit Sunrise Sessions

Get the most out of your Summit experience by participating in Sunrise Sessions each morning.  You’ll hear the results of new research and surveys on leadership and strategic topics, learn about new initiatives to improve community health, and gain tools for managing emerging business challenges.

Friday, July 25th • 7:00-8:15 am
The Board’s Role in Creating a Healthy Culture with the Medical Staff: The Current State and Best Practices

Jay Justice, Senior Vice President, Integrated Healthcare Strategies, Minneapolis, MN
Traditionally, the quality of the relationship between the medical staff and hospital administration has been the responsibility of the executive team and medical staff leadership. However, the board can and should play an important role in shaping the organization’s structure, attitudes and behaviors in regard to its medical staff. Strong board leadership can establish an expectation and directive for how the provider enterprise will relate to the medical staff, from the C-suite through rank and file. The AHA’s Center for Healthcare Governance and Integrated Healthcare Strategies have undertaken a study to identify the current state-of-the-art among hospital and health system governing boards in medical staff relationships. Presenters will share the study results, describing the best practice behaviors taken by boards and leadership who are committed to developing a healthy culture with their physicians.

Medicare Recovery Audit Contractors:
What You Need to Know to Prepare Your Organization for Review

Alyssa Keefe, Senior Associate Director, Policy, American Hospital Association, Washington, DC and Don May, Vice President, Policy, American Hospital Association, Washington, DC
The Medicare Recovery Audit Contractor (RAC) program is charged with identifying improper Medicare payments—both overpayments and underpayments. The demonstration program began operation in three states in 2005 and expanded to two additional states in 2007. The CMS plans to roll out a permanent, nationwide RAC program by 2010. Contracts are expected to be awarded to four regional RACs this spring; actual claims review in each of the 50 states will then be phased-in over the following 18 months. Attend this session to hear more about the RAC program and to learn more about the tools you can use to successfully prepare your organization for review.

IT Leadership in an Age of Consumerism

Patients have come to recognize the link between information technology, customer service and quality health care. So have physicians and nurses. Are we meeting the challenge? This panel will examine data from the 2008 Most Wired Survey and Benchmarking Study, providing a comprehensive overview of the state of the art and key challenges ahead. Key findings from the survey will be announced in this session, with a panel of two hospital CIOs and industry representatives from McKesson and Accenture examining the ramifications of the results.

Creating Value: Performance and Impact of Palliative and End-of-Life Care

Access to palliative and end-of-life care services is growing nationwide—but how is it affecting the delivery and cost of hospital care? Patient and family experiences? Provider relationships with each other and their communities? Find ways to ask and answer these questions in your institution. Hear from organizations being honored in this year’s Circle of Life Awards: Celebrating Innovation in Palliative and End-of-Life Care.

The Commission to Build a Healthier America: Seeking Non-medical Solutions to Improve Health for All Americans

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has convened a two-year Commission to focus on factors outside of the health care system to identify non-medical, evidence-based strategies— both short and long term—to improve the health of all Americans. Commissioners are investigating how factors such as education, environment, income and housing shape and affect personal behavioral choice, and how specific programs and policies could make a difference. This session will provide an overview of the Commission, new research, and progress to date. It will conclude with a moderated discussion of the role of health care leadership in this important initiative. The Commission is co-chaired by Mark McClellan, former FDA Commissioner and Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and Alice Rivlin, former director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Saturday, July 26th, 7:00-8:15 am
Building the Bridge to High Performance Health Care While We Walk on It

Susan DeVore, Chief Operating Officer, Premier Inc., Charlotte, NC
Citizens need hospitals to transform health care from the inside out, to help clarify the reform debate, and then participate in developing health care financing reform solutions. The Premier health care alliance has been deeply involved in the largest hospital pay-for-performance initiative to date. This project is providing the foundation for the CMS proposals for value-based purchasing. The considerable clinical quality improvement demonstrated by Premier’s 260 hospital participants points to the vast potential for creating significantly more change via similar programs. In this session, participants will gain an understanding of what hospitals and physicians do and how they are paid for doing it. DeVore will share thoughts on how to reengineer health care to make it more efficient and higher quality and provide employers, health plans and consumers more value for money spent.

Headline News: Supply Chain Surpasses Labor in Hospital Expenses; Is Your Hospital Ready for the Revolution?

Jean Sargent, Immediate Past President, Association for Healthcare Resource and Materials Management and Director, Materials Management, University of Kentucky Medical Center, Lexington, KY and Jamie Kowalski, Vice President, Business Development, Owens & Minor, Inc., Mechanicsville, VA
This session will address the key industry trends identified through the 2008 National Executive Survey on Supply Chain Management and their implications. It will offer strategies that executives will need to understand and deploy to deal with the associated challenges. Of particular interest to attendees will be the reactions of both C-suite executives and supply chain leaders to the projection that the annual spend on the total supply chain will continue to escalate at a double digit annual rate. This will propel supply chain expense to the largest operating expense category for a provider, surpassing total labor expense. Other developments, along with their sources and triggers will be discussed.

Learning Through Emotional Intelligence to Improve Performance

Michael E. Frisina, PhD, MA, Administrative Director, Tuomey Healthcare System, Sumter, SC
The goal of leadership developers is to create a mechanism to ensure that the time spent in a professional and personal development program changes behavior and enhances performance so that the clinical and business objectives are achieved. Behavioral competencies are not innate talents but learned abilities, each of which has a unique contribution to making leaders more resonant and therefore more effective. This workshop will expose participants to the emotional experiential learning model. You will discover the link among the triad of self-awareness, self-management, and empathy and the art of handling other people’s emotions effectively to build authentic relationships in the organization