Beginning about five years ago, HomeTown Health began to host various policy makers to visit HomeTown's member hospitals for the purpose of sharing the knowledge and experience of running a small rural hospital. These visits have become incredibly successful and well hosted and attended.
Clearly it is better for both parties to know each other (policymakers and hospital administration) and to understand what each other is doing, especially since the policy side of health care so affects the finances, operations and clinical side of rural hospital health care.
The field visit just completed was another rigorous trip in which we carried Margie Coggins of the House Budget Office who does Medicaid budget planning for Rep. Mickey Channell and Alec Steele - DCH Director of Medicaid Reimbursement to a series of hospitals. The trip included driving them almost 800 miles in two days, visting 5 hospitals, viewing 3 telemedicine sites, holding one 2 1/2 hour hospital CEO conference with 20 attendees and attending a hospital dinner meeting with key staff and a board member. There were many subjects discussed and presented by the various hospitals including the importance of DSH money and it's timely distribution, many aspects of telemedicine, the many problems with CMO's, the difficulty of credentialing new physicians, recruiting, and various Medicaid claims processing issues to name a few. The visitors were gracious listerners to all of the issues and carried many action items back to Atlanta.
Many thanks go out to the hosts and participants for the visit!!
.JPG)