2019 California Hospital Association Advocacy Priorities

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The strength and personal commitment of California hospital volunteers are unparalleled. And their contributions to the work of the California Hospital Association (CHA) are invaluable.

As we build upon the strong foundation volunteers have laid through decades of work, CHA is now looking to the future, to determine how our partnership with volunteers can help serve hospitals for the decades to come.

To that end, we are pleased to share with you three focus areas for our partnership – Energize, Engage and Empower – and how each will both strengthen our relationship and help the hospitals we all serve meet their mission of care.

Energize – Together, we have an opportunity to energize the California Hospital Volunteer Leadership Network, gleaning valuable insight and perspective into how we can better help hospitals carry out their work. By more fully integrating the Volunteer Leadership Network – a group of volunteers and paid volunteer leaders with whom CHA interacts on matters of importance to hospital volunteers – we will create new opportunities to educate volunteers and obtain input on key issues.

  • The Network will continue to meet annually – not only to plan for the annual conference, but also to share challenges, opportunities and best practices occurring throughout the state. 
  • Through a new conference call and webinar opportunities with me personally and with our association’s leaders, we plan to share with the Network on an ongoing basis more about our policy and advocacy activities, like our CHA 2019 Advocacy Priorities, and to discuss with you policies like homeless discharge planning, social determinants of health, “surprise” billing, and more.  Please complete this short questionnaire to help us identify and prioritize public policy issues that are most impactful to your volunteer leadership role.
  • As always, we will stay close and tap in to the leadership of the Network, who provide advice and guidance to CHA. We’ll convene this group virtually twice yearly for listening and planning sessions.

Engage – Our greatest opportunity for broad volunteer engagement is through our annual conference. CHA will continue to support this statewide gathering. We understand it is increasingly difficult, due to time and cost constraints, for volunteers to attend events like these. With that in mind, we’ll continue to work with Network leadership to explore the best ways for us to connect with volunteers across the state and for CHA to foster opportunities for volunteers to connect with each other.

Empower – We have a tremendous opportunity to empower volunteers through the continuous sharing of information and ideas. Look for more content available through CHA’s website and newsletter, as well as the more strategic use of social media to learn from one another and to provide a platform where we can discuss volunteer activities among hospitals.

Key to all of this work is CHA’s Melanie Shanley, now our Volunteer Services Program Manager, who will continue to provide leadership for these activities. She has done a great job, working hand in hand with the committee, to build another successful conference this year. We know she’ll continue to exceed expectations as your staff lead at CHA.

Carmela Coyle
President and CEO
California Hospital Association (CHA)
California Association of Hospitals and Health Systems (CAHHS)

2019 CHA Advocacy Priorities
   
Coverage and Access to Health Care Health Care Affordability
   
Protect and Expand Funding Access to Behavioral Health Care
   
Workforce and Labor Development Statutory and Regulatory Reform