Local hospital leaders attend statewide meeting
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[H. William Hartley, President/CEO of Ferrell Hospital, joined other hospital leaders at the annual meeting of the Illinois Hospital Association (IHA) Small and Rural Hospitals Constituency Section, held June 24 - 26 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Springfield. The meeting focused on the theme Illinois Small & Rural Hospitals: A Vision of Excellence. Speakers addressed current trends in the health care environment and strategies to help rural hospital leaders in responding to those trends.
The keynote presentation featured Billy Riggs, MRE, M.Div., presenting How to Scale the Impossible: Scale New Leadership Heights. Larry Walker, President of The Walker Company provided The Illinois Hospital Governance Challenge: Unleashing the Power of Purposeful Governance and Orion Samuelson presented Development of Our Rural Communities and Health Care Systems. Sessions on succession planning, quality and excellence, physician shortages and an update from John Supplitt, Senior Director, American Hospital Association Section for Small or Rural Hospitals, were offered as well.
IHA's Small & Rural Hospitals Constituency Section, comprising 86 hospitals that have fewer than 150 acute care beds and/or are located outside a metropolitan statistical area, annually convenes to share ideas on how to better serve their patients and communities. More than one-third of Illinois hospitals serve rural areas, in which 13 percent of the state's population is scattered across nearly 63 percent of its land area.
In addition to providing essential health care, rural hospitals are often the primary economic engine of the community. A hospital is among the top three employers in 41% of Illinois' rural counties. Rural hospitals employ over 27,000 people, or almost 12 percent of the state's hospital workforce. Rural hospitals pump almost $1.3 billion into their local economies in the form of salaries and benefits that they pay to their employees.
"This meeting is a great opportunity for representatives from Small Hospitals to attend great educational sessions as well as exceptional networking time with our peers, said Bill Hartley, President/CEO of Ferrell Hospital. Ferrell Hospital, a 25-bed Critical Access Hospital, offers inpatient, outpatient, behavioral health, and emergency services.