Welcome to Summer!  It will officially be here on Thursday, but I think many of us have already experienced summer temperatures and storms.  I hope that you have plans for some fun and relaxation during the summer months.  We all need to recharge ourselves to better serve our members!  Send us some pictures of your summer fun!  

Summer time is also a time to catch up – catch up with friends and family – and time to catch up on projects.  NCHN is catching up on some annual housekeeping tasks and we need your help!  Thanks to the 43 members that have submitted your 2013 dues assessment form.  If you that have not yet submitted the form, please do so today, so that we can mark that off our summer to do list.  Thanks a bunch!  

Also, Committee sign-ups are still open – we need you – so please take a few minutes to sign up for a committee and become involved with NCHN and your peers through committee work. 

And I know – we are surveying you all a lot, but we really need the feedback as we continue making plans for activities and events for 2013-2014, so please take a few minutes and complete a couple more short specific surveys and give us your feedback:  

• Coffee/Tea Chats Survey – we would love to hear from you about your preference of time and day: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2013-2014CoffeeTeaChats  
• Membership Benefit Survey – we are also seeking input about NCHN Membership Benefits:  http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2013MembershipBenefitsSurvey 

We really appreciate your input.  Thanks for taking the time to let us know your thoughts and needs.  

The HCAHPS Webinar Series started on June 11.  The session was excellent!  If you have hospitals as members of your network and you have not taken advantage of this program, I encourage you to take another look at it!  It is a wonderful educational series on HCAHPS and how to assist the hospital to increase their scores.  You can read more about the program here or give me or Christy a call at 540-352-2529 if you would like to discuss. 

This month we have also welcomed a new organizational member – TORCH (Texas Organization of Rural Community Hospitals).  We are happy to add TORCH and David Pearson, CEO to the NCHN Community. You can find out more about TORCH here.   For those of you that were able to participate on the Quarterly Informational Call on Monday, you heard from David about the work that he is doing with his members in the area of advocacy and education.  David shared with us the 6 T’s of why he feels advocacy work by network leaders is important and what it brings to your network organization - Visibility, Credibility, Loyalty, Security, Stability, and Affordability.  For those of you unable to make the call, we will be distributing Maggie Elehwany, NRHA slides, along with a summary of Dave’s comments. 

Maggie invited rural health networks to create a unified message – “An investment in rural health:

• Protects patients;
• Protects the rural economy; and
• Protects taxpayers.”

Some highlights or facts that Maggie shared with us about rural health are:

• 62 million Americans rely on rural health providers
• 20% of the population lives in rural America, yet they are scattered over 90% of her landmass
• Only 9% of physicians practice in rural America
• Health care is the fasting growing segment of the rural economy
• In most rural communities, the hospital is the first or second largest employer
• The Federal investment in rural hospitals benefits both the rural patient and the tax payer.  In fact, rural hospitals provide care for 18 percent of all inpatient, outpatient and long-term Medicare patients, yet receive only 15 percent of Medicare expenditures. 

NCHN will be starting a grassroots advocacy group, Champions for Rural Health Networks, to look at implementing some of the strategies suggested by both Maggie and David.  If you are interested in participating in the group please let me know.