The TORCH Annual Conference, held earlier this month, was an ‘out of this world’ experience with great education, relaxing activities and record attendance as well. A total of 558 people attended the meeting this year. The staff and the Board of Directors heard a lot of great comments about the excellent programs, professionalism of the Awards Luncheon and the quality of this year’s Annual Trade Show. New room arrangements added to the excitement and we couldn’t be more pleased with the overall result.
       Our theme for 2006 was exploring “The New Frontier: A Rural Hospital Odyssey.” Sweeping changes to the Medicare program, a resurgence in managed care, integrating new information technologies and ever-expanding quality reporting initiatives make an already difficult job even more demanding. Knowing where to go and what to do makes all the difference. Hospital administrators, trustees and hospital staff learned how best to navigate the uncharted territory that we now find ourselves in. However, the Rural Hospital Odyssey goes on and TORCH will continue to seek out ways to assist rural and community hospitals the whole year through.
       We want to thank each and every participant for their unique and valuable contributions to this event. Our goal of making each meeting better than the last would not be possible if it weren’t for the support of the many exhibitors and sponsors who make such a significant investment in the TORCH Annual Conference. A list of these companies is attached and is also posted on the TORCH website. Hospitals can find valuable resources there. The 2006 TORCH Annual Conference Syllabus is available for a fee. Call the TORCH Office for details.
       Plan to join us this November 8 & 9 for the first TORCH Leadership and Management Institute and again next April for the 2007 Texas Conference of Rural and Community Hospitals.

In recognition of three decades of service to rural hospitals in Texas and to the communities of Bowie and Muenster, Lynn Heller was named the recipient of the 2006 “Gordon Russell Merit Award.” This award exists to recognize outstanding achievement by rural and community hospital administrators for their leadership and dedication to the profession.
       Gordon Russell, the award’s namesake, was the administrator of Hi-Plains Hospital for over 40 years and a former mayor of Hale Center, Texas. Mr. Heller was selected for his dedication to rural health care, his active involvement in TORCH as one of its founders, as well as his mentoring of emerging leaders in the field.
       Mr. Heller has over 30 years of experience with both rural hospitals and regional health systems. He was educated at Midwestern University and spent time in the banking business, before becoming Assistant Administrator at Bowie Memorial Hospital. He was promoted to Administrator in 1984 and held that position until 1994. During that time, Lynn helped to start TORCH and was Chairman from 1990-1994.
       Lynn held various positions in subsequent years: consultant, IPA director, health plan administrator and Assistant Administrator of Affiliated Services for Wise Regional Health System. Most recently, Lynn has been the CEO and CFO of Muenster Memorial Hospital. Lynn served ten years in the Army Reserves. He’s also held leadership positions with AHA, THA, and TMA, as well as with various state agencies and local organizations.
       In the nomination letter by Theron Park, CEO at Moore County Hospital District in Dumas, it was written that “Lynn’s leadership and easy-going style has endeared him to many of his colleagues. The development and subsequent success of TORCH can be traced back to his passion for the success of rural healthcare.” John Boff, President and CEO of TORCH, said “We congratulate Lynn on this tremendous honor. His professionalism, enduring service and dedication to rural hospitals speaks for itself.”
       John Boff received this letter from Jon Gavras, President/CEO of Dallas Fort Worth Hospital Council:

Dear John: Congratulations to TORCH on its 15th anniversary and your leadership during its initial growth. I remember some of the discussions prior to and during TORCH’s formation. I can remember Lynn Heller defending its formation before a group questioning the need. Lynn did an excellent job making the case in a professional manner. TORCH filled a need and today’s result confirms that fact. You and your staff deserve praise for TORCH’s accomplishments.”

Congratulations to Lynn on this momentous achievement from all of us here at TORCH.

Hospitals depend on the local media to share news and information about changes taking place within the healthcare industry. Local newspapers, as well as radio and television stations are also an important part of any successful public relations campaign.
       Therefore, the Texas Organization of Rural & Community Hospitals developed the TORCH Media Success Awards to recognize local media for its role in advocating for rural and community hospitals. This year’s winners did an outstanding job of informing the citizens of LaGrange and Anson about the good things taking place at their local hospital.
       These awards were presented at the TORCH Annual Awards Luncheon held in Dallas on April 6th. On hand to receive the awards for St. Mark’s Medical Center and the Fayette County Record were Kelley Oliphint, CEO, and Weldon Koenig, a trustee, of St. Mark’s Medical Center.
       Ted Matthews, CEO of Anson General Hospital, accepted the awards for both Anson General Hospital and the Western Observer. Each entity received a matching plaque to symbolize the ongoing partnership that these organizations have developed within their local community.
       David Pearson, Vice President of Advocacy and Communications for TORCH, said “It is a pleasure to present these initial Media Success Awards to such deserving institutions. Newspapers and hospitals are the bedrock of the community and when they cooperate effectively, great things can happen.”
       Jan Reed, Chair of the TORCH Board of Directors and CEO of the Electra Memorial Hospital, said “Congratulations to St. Mark’s Medical Center and the Fayette County Record for working to improve communications and the understanding of rural hospitals. We hope to encourage more rural hospitals to reach out to the local media and tell their story.”
       The citizens of Fayette and Jones counties are fortunate to be so well informed. Congratulations again to this year’s winners.

So far, Rick Perry has called a total of seven special sessions during his tenure as Governor. The first four had to do primarily with Congressional redistricting. The next two both had to do with public school financing. The last of which was an unmitigated disaster by almost anyone’s account. Now, the third called Special Session of the 79th Texas Legislature is mostly about property taxes, at least on the outset.
       The Governor wants to lower school-related property taxes by $6 billion and has said that any such reduction would take effect immediately. Therefore, the legislature must completely overhaul the state’s business taxes and spend a large part of the surprisingly high $9 billion state surplus to do it. In the end, the state’s share of public education funding is supposed to increase from 34% to 50%.
      The Legislature plans to address problems with the current franchise tax and institute a tax on gross receipts by 2007. At this point, the only healthcare providers at risk would include for-profit hospitals, clinics and other providers. For-profit hospitals would be able to offset most if not all of their tax liability based on their charity care and/or their Medicaid utilization. Similar considerations are also being discussed for physicians.
       In the end, the surplus is likely to be mostly spent through, cigarette and automobile taxes are likely to increase, and even if the math all works out, the sticky wicket continues to be education reform. Teachers want a pay raise, but many in the Legislature feel that teacher salaries and other funding mechanisms should be more incentive based. For that matter, if Conservatives don’t feel that performance is an integral part of the overall solution, then don’t be surprised if another special session gets called again this year.
      Tax cuts can make for awfully good campaign slogans when November rolls around.

Over 25% of Texans have no health insurance. Nearly 46 million Americans, including more than 8 million children, are forced to gamble every day that they won't get sick or injured. That's a risk no one should have to take. Uninsured Americans live sicker and die younger than those with health insurance. Just one serious illness or injury can wipe out an uninsured family's bank account, and the problem is getting worse.
      That's why the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and some of the most influential organizations in the country are again organizing Cover the Uninsured Week. This year's effort (May 1-7) will mobilize thousands of individuals and organizations from many sectors of society to plan activities to tell Congress that health care coverage must be their top priority.
      Cover the Uninsured Week 2006 will create a groundswell of activities in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. These activities are designed to mobilize a diverse mix of business owners, union members, educators, students, patients, hospital staff, physicians, nurses, faith leaders and their congregants, and many others at thousands of events across the country.
      Millions of people will be alerted to the pressing needs of those living without health insurance. TORCH plans to work with the Texas Hospital Association and other advocacy organizations as we make the ‘uninsured’ a high priority during the 80th State Legislative Session. Look for ways to publicize this effort in your local community. Talking points, press releases and other resources are available online at www.thaonline.org/ProductsServices/ManualsToolkits/UninsuredPK.

Thomas Leary, Director of Federal Affairs for the Health Information Management Systems Society, was a guest speaker at our Annual Conference. He came to give TORCH member hospitals the lay of the land as it relates to the adoption of health information technology. He said that one of HIMSS’ primary goals is to ensure that rural providers receive adequate information about new opportunities and to ensure that the uptake and implementation of I.T. resources in rural areas doesn’t lag behind the rest of the country.
      Therefore, HIMSS is looking for organizations that share their vision of effective and affordable I.T. adoption. TORCH believes in this effort so much that we have decided to co-sponsor the 5th Annual HIMSS Advocacy Day, June 5 & 6, which is part of National Health I.T. Week 2006. HIMSS members gather each year in Washington, DC to advance the best use of health information technology to improve the quality of healthcare delivery.
       Participants connect with federal healthcare policy makers in a half-day discussion on current issues before traveling to Capitol Hill to engage with Members of Congress and staff on the HIMSS Advocacy Agenda. The events are capped off with a Solutions Showcase and Networking reception on Capitol Hill where the Advocacy Award winner is announced each year.
       David Pearson will be in attendance on behalf of TORCH. However, all the activities listed above are free of charge (advanced registration required). Any TORCH member wishing to learn more about healthcare I.T. or participate by registering your support for this effort with your local Congressman while in DC can register on the HIMSS website at www.himss.org/advocacy/advocacyday2006.asp .

The Texas Organization of Rural & Community Hospitals (TORCH) recently endorsed Optio Healthcare Solutions for its 150-member hospitals. Gonzales Healthcare Systems is the first TORCH member and the third QHR-managed facility to select Optio under strategic agreements with TORCH and QHR, a leading provider of healthcare management services.
       Gonzales Healthcare Systems has selected the Optio QuickRecord® and MedEx™ Suites to provide electronic health record and forms management software solutions. Gonzales Healthcare Systems will also deploy Optio Patient Signature Capture™ to enable paperless registration at its 35-bed Level IV trauma hospital and two rural health clinics in Gonzales County, Texas.
       “Optio provides us with an affordable way to modernize our information technology infrastructure and migrate to electronic records to better serve our community,” said Gonzales Healthcare Systems CEO Chuck Norris. “Our physicians are also looking forward to having the ability to complete charts and view lab trending results remotely from their homes and offices.”
       “Optio provides a step-by-step implementation process that starts us on the path toward electronic records and a more efficient, paper-free environment,” said Leslie Janssen, RHIA, director of health information management for Gonzales Health Systems. “The biggest issue is access to information, and Optio is going to provide our clinicians with a simultaneous, web portal access to our clinical systems.”
       Optio Healthcare Solutions automate error-prone manual processes and provides a universal hub and Web-enabled access point for all current and historic patient documents. Optio Solutions will generate on-demand patient admission packs, eliminating the cost of producing and storing preprinted registration forms. Registrars will produce bar-coded wristbands and labels complete with patient demographics for accurate identification throughout the system. For more information, go to www.torchnet.org/endorsed_vendors.htm .

The Sharing Best Practices in Patient Safety Conference will take place Friday, May 12th, at the Omni Hotel Downtown in Austin. This activity is a part of the TMF Health Quality Institute’s activities as a node participant in the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s 100,000 Lives Campaign.
       The IHI’s 100K Lives Campaign is an initiative to engage U.S. hospitals in a commitment to implement changes in care proven to improve patient care and prevent avoidable deaths. The Campaign is the first national effort to promote saving a specified number of lives by a certain date (June 14, 2006).
       Whether or not your hospital is currently involved in the 100K Lives Campaign, this is an opportunity for participants to share and learn successful patient safety strategies. Interact with successful hospitals that have embraced the campaign’s platforms. If you are just getting started, or have your sights set on making further improvements and holding the gains, you won’t want to miss out!
      This activity provides 6.3 contact hours. The cost is $75 per participant. For more information or to register, go to www.tmf.org/hospitalqi or you can contact Lori Brandes at 512-334-1699 or lbrandes@txqio.sdps.org .

Despite a decade of tumultuous change, the perennial problems of high costs, uneven quality and inequitable access continue to plague the U.S. health care system, according to a commentary published today by the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC).
       "In a decade that saw the rapid rise and hard fall of tightly managed care, there was plenty of change but little progress in solving the cost, access and quality problems in the health care system," said Paul B. Ginsburg, Ph.D., president of HSC, a nonpartisan policy research organization funded principally by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF).
       Noting the rapid changes in health care financing and delivery, catalyzed by the 1993 Clinton initiative to reform health care, RWJF created HSC in 1995 to monitor these trends and assess their impact on people through national surveys of households and physicians and site visits to representative communities.
       In the commentary, Ginsburg and coauthor Cara S. Lesser, HSC director of site visits, point out that in the course of all the "mergers and break-ups and alphabet soup of new types of organizations, management strategies and payment arrangements…In many respects, we're no better off than we were a decade ago."
       About the same proportion of Americans—15 percent—lacks health insurance, health care spending now consumes 16 percent of the overall economy and disparities between the health care "haves" and "have not’s" have widened.
       "Competition for the health care dollar has become intense," the articles states, as hospitals and physicians have moved to increase revenues by focusing on profitable service lines, including cardiac and cancer care.
       "Since most of the increased competition is aimed at increasing service volume rather than improving quality and increasing efficiency, it's highly questionable whether these developments bode well for patients and those who pay the bills—primarily employers and government," the article states.
       Identifying three lessons about what motivates and constrains change in the health care system: 1) Public perception matters; 2) all health care is local; and 3) the devil is in the details, the authors urge policy makers and health care leaders to engage the public; recognize that the local nature of health care markets means strategies to improve care will play out differently across communities; and keep in mind that meaningful change will not occur overnight.
       "We need to encourage our political and health care leaders to look beyond the next election or fiscal year and talk more frankly about real solutions to the enduring problems of high health care costs, uneven quality and inequitable access," the commentary concludes.

The Commentary—A Decade of Tracking Health System Change—is available at http://hschange.org/CONTENT/821/ .

Jennifer Claymon was honored as a “Texas Rising Star” by Texas Monthly and Law & Politics Magazine recently. Earlier this year, we announced that Claymon was Board Certified in Health Law. Board certification is a formal recognition of skill, experience and reputation as a lawyer in the health law field. Keep up the great work, Jennifer!