AHA Initiatives

Communicating With Patients

A trusting relationship with patients and their families is built on open, honest communication. However, today's health care environment makes good communication among patients, families, and caregivers harder and harder to achieve. Hospital stays are shorter, medical care is more technologically complex, resources are constrained, and there is a growing need for patients and families to have more information about, and involvement in, care decisions.

Community Connections

Community Connections is a powerful effort that starts with hospital leadership in the community. It is supported by the AHA and your state hospital associations, and has one goal: To help hospitals reaffirm their rightful place as vital and valued community resources that merit broad public support.

Health Care Workforce 

Ideas in Action are examples of innovation that are already working across the nation and that could make a real difference in your organization. Visit this site for the latest news and to tell us your success story. Stop back often as we continue to collect and share examples of how hospitals are crafting winning approaches to workforce issues.

Health for Life

Health for Life identifies five essential elements of reform upon which we must build if our nation wants to achieve better health and better health care.

Hospitals in Pursuit of Excellence

Hospitals in Pursuit of Excellence (HPOE) is the AHA’s strategic platform to accelerate performance improvement efforts in U.S. hospitals.

Hospital Quality Alliance

The Hospital Quality Alliance is a reporting initiative providing information on the quality of care in hospitals who volunteered to report their data for selected clinical topics. This website contains the latest data and resources available for this initiative to make hospital quality information publicly available, and to improve the care hospitals provide.

Hospitals Caring for Communities

America’s hospitals are about people taking care of people, often at the most vulnerable times in their life - a responsibility hospitals take very seriously. Day in and day out, the people of America’s hospitals are on the front lines caring for the nation’s poor, uninsured and other patients in their communities. The services they provide extend well beyond the four walls of the hospital. This website tells their stories.

Put It In Writing

An advance directive is your life on your terms. Whether you're 18 or 80, documenting your wishes today means your family won't have to make heart-wrenching decisions later. To help patients, families and the hospitals that serve them, the American Hospital Association (AHA), with the cooperation of other organizations, has compiled key resources to enhance educational efforts and raise awareness around this important issue.