Chair File: Overcoming Challenges, Advancing Innovation in Rural Health Care

All hospital and health system leaders are committed to delivering the best possible care to the people we serve while navigating the changes and challenges we face.

For the leaders of rural hospitals, those challenges come with an added degree of complexity: recruiting providers. There also are administrative burdens that fall on a small staff and razor-thin margins. Add Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates that simply don’t reflect the cost of care and a patient population that may live hundreds of miles from the nearest hospital. However, those challenges come with opportunities for growth and alignment.

This week, I’m in San Antonio at the AHA Rural Health Care Leadership Conference with more than 1,300 health care leaders from across the country. A conference like this is an incredibly valuable opportunity to learn from each other. We’re discussing innovative approaches to transform care delivery and address the most significant issues facing rural health care providers.

During today’s opening session, I had the honor of presenting the AHA Rural Hospital Excellence in Innovation Award. This award recognizes rural hospitals that demonstrate responsiveness, creativity and excellence in developing or sustaining programs that address the unique challenges facing rural and frontier communities. This year’s award recipient is WVU Medicine Potomac Valley Hospital in Keyser, W.Va. The three finalists are Brattleboro (Vt.) Memorial Hospital, Reid Health in Richmond, Ind., and Scotland Health Care System in Laurinburg, N.C. Read more about how these hospitals are advancing care through innovation. 

The efforts of these rural hospitals — like the ones your organizations undertake every day to care for your communities — show us what is possible when we view challenges as opportunities.

Across this country, in hospitals of all sizes, health care leaders are finding new and better ways to tackle issues that confront our organizations and our field, with the goal of advancing health for the patients and communities we serve. Let’s continue to be defined not by the challenges we face but instead by how we overcome them.