| From the Desk of the KAHCE President |
| Patricia Sanders-Hall, M.A., FACHE |
This has been an amazing year of many great accomplishments for KAHCE
as well as identifying several areas where we can continue to focus our goals
for improvement and growth. Our Education Committee, chaired by Scott McIntyre,
hit it out of the park in offering a program last spring in Topeka with 9
face-to-face credits. Every panel was an excellent learning experience bring
updated data, new approaches and remarkable speakers with a broad array of
backgrounds, experiences and talents. As if it was a race for best performance, the Sponsorship Committee,
chaired by Bob Bregant, broke all records in bringing in sponsorships which far
exceeded our goals and gave us the opportunity to fully underwrite all
education expenses and also to consider additional ideas for future programs,
scholarships and support. These two
committees represent the strongest part of our chapter mission to serve to
develop leaders in healthcare today and in the future.
We also took on the daunting task of reviewing and revising the Chapter
Bylaws. This is never and fun job, but the Executive Committee kept hacking
away at this task until we reached the finish and we voted on the updated
changes at our annual meeting in September.
And, speaking of the September annual meeting at the Overland
Park Convention Center, it was a day jammed packed from start to finish
with quality education, a fantastic speaker from ACHE governance, the election of
our new officers and board members and appointment of committee chairs, annual
reports from key committees during our business meeting and the presentation of
chapter and Regent’s awards. Again, the
education panels were excellent and offered an additional 3.0 face-to-face
credits which maxed us out for the year.
There was a stellar group who presented on the topic of Diversity
including an attorney, a director of diversity and a person with diverse
background who had risen to a top leadership position in his corporation. Great real life examples and strong data were
provided by each panel member, and I am certain everyone who attended found
something new or expanded from the information they shared. Our special guest was Mr. Richard Cordova, former Chairman of ACHE, who provided an update on the current strategic goals of ACHE and highlighted the commitment to diversity from the national level. It was a wonderful compliment to hear Mr. Cordova say the morning diversity panel discussion was "one of the best he had ever attended." Our afternoon panel on Healthcare Finance and
Funding Challenges was equally outstanding, bringing input from a strong panel
of 2 CEOs and a CFO from 3 distinctly different healthcare organizations in
Kansas They provided insights about the realities of both abrupt and
forecasted changes affecting the mission and the margin.
The Regent’s Award for Early Careerist was presented
to Monica McCarthy who was the past chair of the Student and Early Careerists
Committee, and the Senior Careerist Award went to Robert Bregant. Roger Masse
has been a stalwart leader within our organization for many years and it was a
pleasure to present him and WSU Faculty Deborah Lehner with Chapter Service Awards. All of these awards were well-deserved and we
are indebted to them for their commitment, fresh ideas and
strong work ethic to continue to grow our organization.
We are excited to know that our newly elected board
and committee chairs will include new positions purposely aimed at representing
early careerists and students in healthcare administration as well as seasoned
senior level executives. We believe our
first year of an expanded committee format to allow for more focused duties
resulted in the intended outcome of a greater sense of purpose and value for
both chairs and committee members. This
was in direct response from feedback from our members who wanted to have more
meaningful participation and opportunities for direct contributions.
We met the goals for diversity and inclusion by
establishing a committee, placing this topic on every board agenda, joining the
Institute for Diversity in Healthcare Management and sponsoring one educational
program.
I look forward to the coming year with Roger Masse as
our new President, Judy Corzine filling the position of President- Elect along
with our Treasurer, George Stover. We
have approved the new position of Board Secretary and hope to bring forward a volunteer
to take this position in 2018. The Board Secretary role does not replace our contract administrative position filled by KHA staff person Susan Cunningham. Board Secretary is a leadership role meant to offer an additional officer who has the primary duty of oversight of our administrative contract functions and leads a periodic review of bylaws, reports status of chapter documents and may serve as chair or co-chair of the Communications Committee. We are greatly indebted to Susan for serving in the administrative role for many years and look forward to our continued contractual relationship with KHA and continuing to have Susan serve in managing general administrative and clerical functions for the chapter. In the
coming months, as we transition from our current leadership team, we will have
our annual board strategic planning retreat in November and set one, two and
three-year goals to submit to ACHE. It
has been my honor and pleasure to have served as your president this past year, and I
greatly appreciate the support and spirit of volunteerism which allowed our
chapter to do so well.
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