(April 26, 2024) – Last week, hospital and health system leaders from across the country gathered in Washington, DC, to attend the 2024 American Hospital Association Annual Meeting. AHA assembled an outstanding speaker line-up that included industry leaders, elected officials and political pundits. The AHA Annual Meeting allows hospital leaders to spend time on Capitol Hill advocating to their elected officials.
Kansas hospital leaders had the opportunity to visit with members of the Kansas Congressional Delegation, and their staff, on Capitol Hill. Our topics of conversation broke down into two major categories: workforce and reimbursement. On the workforce front, we were encouraged to find broad support for our drive to protect our hospitals' nurses and grow the pool of potential nursing hires. To that end, we want to thank Senator Jerry Moran for his work on simplifying the process of hiring foreign BSN graduates and Congressman Tracey Mann for cosponsoring a bill to reallocate unused temporary work visas to nurses. Also, kudos to Congressman Jake LaTurner and Congresswoman Sharice Davids for cosponsoring the SAVE Act, which makes it a federal crime to assault a health care worker.
On reimbursement, we continue to educate our delegation on how the insurance industry's lack of accountability to any effective oversight body emboldens them to continuously undermine the 340B Drug Pricing Program, engage in questionable practices for signing up seniors for Medicare Advantage plans and deny coverage for Medicare Advantage beneficiaries indefinitely for procedures generally covered by traditional Medicare. We also discussed the need for extending various Medicare programs like the low-volume hospital and Medicare dependent hospital designations, while rejecting any sequestration increases either in percentage or duration.
We discussed the need to modify the Rural Emergency Hospital program and feel confident a Senate bill will be introduced later this year, as well as a provision on this matter in a larger House Ways and Means Committee rural health care bill. Finally, we discussed the need for providing grant dollars for hospitals struggling to keep up with possible cybersecurity requirements coming out of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
Thanks to the Kansas Hospital Association members who were able to join us:
- Molly Haase, AdventHealth, Shawnee Mission
- Paul Kempinski and Dallas Polen, Children's Mercy Hospital, Overland Park
- Nicole Milo, CommonSpirit, Centennial, CO
- Carrie Lutz, Holton Community Hospital, Holton
- George Stover, Hospital District #1 of Rice County, Lyons
- Larry Van Der Wege, Lindsborg Community Hospital, Lindsborg
- Kiley Floyd, Curt Sudbeck, Niki Buesing and Courtney Schmelzle, Nemaha Valley Community Hospital, Seneca
- Ashley Hutchinson, Salina Regional Health Center, Salina
- Bobby Olm-Shipman, Tim Van Zandt and Jake Vance, Saint Luke's South Hospital, Overland Park
- Greg Bentz, Saint Luke's South Hospital Board, Overland Park
- Sherri Vaughn, MD and Kenny Wilk, The University of Kansas Health System, Kansas City
--Chad Austin