While preliminary data from the first year under Maryland's modernized Medicare waiver show significant improvement on every key metric, hospital leaders have long understood that success cannot be sustained solely through our own initiatives. Building on your early progress means collaborating with primary care physicians, long-term care facilities, home health operators and others.

That's why it was so encouraging to spend some time this week at a summit co-sponsored by LifeSpan Network, The Beacon Institute and MHA. The summit - "Cross Continuum Partnership Models: What Maryland Can Learn from the National Lab" - convened top national leaders to highlight how interdependent, cross-organizational partnerships are improving patient outcomes, reducing costs and limiting unnecessary utilization.

This is a national trend, as hospitals are becoming more discerning when choosing post-acute partners. For our part, MHA has produced a guide to support your efforts to identify, develop and strengthen partnerships with Skilled Nursing Facilities.

The speakers at this week's event shared their impressive stories with nearly 150 women and men from across Maryland's health care continuum. While the data and anecdotes offered a range of practical ideas, the real inspiration came from the fact that each speaker echoed precisely the same message:  the paradigm has shifted, the change from volume to value is irrevocable, the people who benefit most from these changes are our patients, and working together is the right - and necessary - thing to do.

Of course, this change in thinking also makes sense from a business perspective. It saves money, it reduces the chance for malpractice claims and it improves an organization's reputation for patient satisfaction (something not to be taken lightly with hospitals' payments increasingly tied to those opinions).

The idea that different organizations, no matter where they sit along the care continuum, embrace responsibility for their patients, even if their portion of care has technically concluded, is inspiring. Hospital "discharges" are obsolete. In their place are warm handoffs, where hospitals take extraordinary care to communicate patients' needs to whomever is responsible for their next steps. And these relationships are reciprocal: Long-term care facilities, home health providers and others are willing and eager to cooperate with hospitals like never before. They share our understanding that getting people the right care, at the right time, in the right setting, requires the expertise of all settings to work in concert. 

There's still time to register for MHA's annual meeting at the Four Seasons Hotel Baltimore on June 1-2. The event is designed for senior leaders of Maryland's hospitals, from CEOs and trustees to chief medical officers, chief nursing officers and others. Registration closes May 22.

This year, MHA will again offer peer-led breakout sessions with health care leaders who have valuable lessons to share on issues essential to success in this new era of care. One of those sessions - HEZs and House Calls - will focus on innovative care delivery models, some of which have been developed with the help of state Health Enterprise Zones. While each community has different needs and a different response is required to meet them, there are common ingredients that successfully take a hospital beyond its four walls.

If you are still in need of a sleeping room at the Four Seasons Hotel for the night of Monday, June 1, please contact Kathy Gotwalt.

Click here to view the annual membership meeting brochure, and here to register.

Contact: Kathy Gotwalt

On Thursday, MHEI conducted a half-day program explaining the basics of the Maryland Medicare waiver, the tenets of population health, and most importantly, the implications each has for mid-level health care managers. Issues discussed centered on the changing health care/hospital culture, critical communication opportunities for managers and staff, and staff and patients, as well as the need for managers to continue to create and re-create efficiencies within their own departments. This program continues MHEI's Population Health Education series, moving it from the C-suite to the general management level.  The next population health program for mid-level managers is "Population Health and the Role of Nursing" on Thursday, September 24. While focusing on nursing, this full-day program is open to all mid-level managers.

Contact: Kelly Heacock