Press Releases

The American Hospital Association (AHA) is launching a new TV ad urging Congress to protect patient access to care by rejecting billions of dollars in reductions to hospital care. So-called site neutral policies could cause more hospitals to shut their doors, especially impacting patients from rural and low-income communities who could lose access to vital services like trauma and maternal care.

Caregivers and other health care professionals are the heart of our nation’s health care system and deserve an environment free from violence. Hospitals are places of healing, which is why they are using a range of innovative strategies to create safer spaces for their workers and patients, including focusing on technology and training to mitigate risk to redesigning facilities and workflow processes to prioritize safety and reimagining relationships with hospital security and others to support prevention and crisis response.

The AHA strongly believes that a skilled, caring workforce is integral to delivery of high quality, safe care. At the same time, safe staffing is about much more than a number. We are concerned that in proposing a one-size-fits-all numerical staffing threshold, CMS would remove the role of clinical judgment in staffing facilities, and inadvertently create patient access challenges across the health care system.

The American Hospital Association (AHA) has elected eight new members to its Board of Trustees for three-year terms beginning Jan. 1, 2024. The Board of Trustees is the highest policymaking body of the AHA and has ultimate authority for the governance and management of its directions and finances.

A new “report” from Elevance Health — the large, for-profit commercial insurer formerly known as Anthem — draws absurd conclusions about the impact of health care systems on access to care, cost and quality. Of greatest irony is that while the national health plan behemoth, which dominates many insurer markets, is pointing fingers at the actual health care providers serving patients, it is pocketing record profits.

The AHA is deeply concerned with CMS’ woefully inadequate inpatient and long-term care hospital payment updates. The agency continues to finalize rate increases that are not commensurate with the near decades-high inflation and increased costs for labor, equipment, drugs and supplies that hospitals across the country are experiencing.

Once again, Patient Rights Advocate has put out a report that blatantly misconstrues, ignores, and mischaracterizes hospitals’ compliance with federal price transparency regulations. The AHA has repeatedly debunked point-by-point Patient Rights Advocate’s intentionally misleading “reports” on price transparency, including earlier this year in a blog and op-ed.

The American Hospital Association’s (AHA) Next Generation Leaders Fellowship, focused on empowering leaders to bring about real and lasting change in health care, announced its latest class of fellows consisting of 43 individuals, including 12 Age-Friendly Fellows supported by The John A. Hartford Foundation.

The American Hospital Association (AHA) Board of Trustees has elected Christina (Tina) M. Freese Decker, president & chief executive officer of Corewell Health, based in Michigan, as its Chair-elect Designate. Freese Decker will be Chair-elect in 2024 and become the 2025 Chair of the AHA, the top-elected official of the national organization that represents America’s hospitals and health systems and works to advance health in America.

The AHA is concerned that CMS is proposing an outpatient hospital payment update of only 2.8% in spite of persistent financial headwinds facing the hospital field. Most hospitals across the country continue to operate on negative or very thin margins that make providing care and investing in their workforce very challenging day to day.