Chairperson's File
Blog posts from 2026 AHA Board Chair Marc Boom, M.D., president and CEO of Houston Methodist, and past chairs.
Improving quality of care can go hand in hand with eliminating disparities in care. University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson participated in Expecting Success: Excellence in Cardiac Care, a program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This initiative aimed to improve quality of cardiac…
How do you measure success in creating a culture of health? Mountain View Hospital, a 25-bed critical access hospital in Madras, Ore., can count the 1,660 pounds that participants collectively lost in Movin? Mountains Health Challenge 2010. MVH serves a diverse, rural and somewhat economically…
A medical staff that is committed to social justice and a vision statement that includes reducing health care disparities. Alameda County Medical Center had these pieces in place to address disparities. Participating in the Disparities Leadership Program , at Massachusetts General Hospital, was the…
Changing demographics continue to fuel the growth of cultural diversity in Northeast Ohio. In turn, the population served by University Hospitals, Cleveland, has become more ethnically diverse. To better serve current patients and welcome new patients, UH's board charged hospital leadership…
The patient population of Heywood Hospital in Gardner, Mass., seemed to lack diversity. But by actively collecting racial, ethnic and religious data, the 134-bed hospital discovered pockets of socioeconomic and minority groups who could benefit from specialized services. Heywood formed a…
To expertly execute a dribble handoff in basketball, communication between teammates is key. How to effectively execute end-of-shift patient handoffs? Again, communication is key. The traditional nursing end-of-shift handoff process at University of Missouri Health Care, Columbia, Mo., involved…
The medical standard for timely angioplasty was 90 minutes door to balloon. The average for Lehigh Valley Health Network was 150 minutes with variation of monthly averages. Meanwhile the average for beginning thrombolytics therapy was much higher than the standard of 30 minutes. In stages over…
Barnes-Jewish Hospital, St. Louis, wanted to transform its organization and in turn, transformed its culture into a continuous improvement culture. While the organization had embraced Lean methodology for years, it found that its project improvements were isolated and not always sustained. A…
Abington (Pa.) Memorial Hospital has used everything from screen saver reminders to notes from the chief of staff in its hand hygiene campaign. The result? An improvement in compliance from 31 percent in late 2007 to 84 percent now for the 665-bed hospital. The campaign started with resident…
Reducing preventable harm by half is a lofty goal for any hospital, let alone a large, integrated system. But leaders at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit say their ambitious No Harm campaign has transformed the system's culture from the board room to the front lines. In 2007, Henry Ford…