Changing of the Guard in California's Rural Hospitals

I just returned from attending this year's California Hospital Association (CHA) Rural Healthcare Symposium. This was the 24th Annual Symposium. Peggy Wheeler, CHA Vice President opened the conference on Thursday morning with an announcement that this year's Symposium drew 120 attendees, including administrators, physicians, board members, managers and other health care professionals. Peggy said this was the largest attendance ever. As usual, it was a great conference with relevant educational sessions on quality and process improvement, capital financing, information technology, new privacy laws and other important topics. For me, it was great to see my colleagues. Including the ones that I have known for years and some new ones as well. We bid a fond farewell to longtime California Rural Hospital CEOs such as David Mechtenberg, Jim Hoss and Debbie Scaiffe. And we welcomed their replacements, Jim Suver, Charlie Harrison and Harry Jasper. It's always great to see talented new people joining our ranks. And, as I looked around the room, there were lots of other new faces as well. It's a challenging time in health care, but an exciting one too. I'm looking forward to working side by side with our new generation of administrators. With the quality of hospital administrators that we continue to attract to California, I feel very good about the future of health care in our State.