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AHA President and CEO Rick Pollack began AHA’s 2024 Annual Meeting remarking on the essential work of hospitals and health systems, as well as the many challenges they are facing, including workforce shortages, underpayment, supply chain issues and cyberattacks.

The voluntary Episode Quality Improvement Program for specialist physicians saved Medicare $20 million in its first year, the Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission

ASHP tracked a record 323 active drug shortages during the first quarter of 2024, surpassing the previ

Commenting April 12 on a proposed rule to strengthen oversight of accrediting organizations, AHA told the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services it supports requiring accrediting organizations to use Medicare’s Conditions of Participation and Conditions for Coverage as their minimum accreditation standards, and to provide an explicit crosswalk of their standards with relevant Medicare regulations.

The Department of Health and Human Services’ revised “bulletin” for HIPAA covered entities and business associates using online tracking technologies only confirms that the original bulletin was “substantively and procedurally unlawful,” AHA April 11 told a federal court hearing its challenge to a bulletin issued by HHS’ Office for Civil Rights that restricts health care providers from using standard third-party web technologies that capture IP addresses on portions of their public-facing webpages.

The AHA’s 2024 Annual Membership Meeting gets underway in two days with a jam-packed schedule featuring prominent federal legislators, top officials from the Administration, influential newsmakers, and hospital and health system leaders who are propelling innovation in our field.

Christina Campos, CEO of Guadalupe County Hospital in Santa Rosa, N.M., and Steven Summer, former president of the Colorado and West Virginia Hospital Associations, will receive 2024 AHA Board of Trustees Awards April 15 at the AHA Annual Membership Meeting in Washington, D.C., for their contributions to AHA and the field.

AHA has released digital tools to help hospitals and health systems celebrate National Hospital Week May 12-18, including a video, ad, toolkit, graphics and GIPHY library.

“Even before the recent Change Healthcare cyberattack that has left some hospitals fronting millions of dollars in extra costs, a perfect storm of complex factors was already threatening the future of high-quality patient care — and misguided proposals from policymakers risk making things even worse,” writes Nancy Howell Agee, CEO of Carilion Clinic and chair of the Coalition to Strengthen America’s Healthcare, whose founding members include the AHA.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention April 11 updated its strategy to improve data exchange with health care organizations and other public health authorities to better detect and monitor public health threats.