Spring is approaching and the flowers, grass and trees are beginning to bud — and so are the weeds in my yard.  The renewal of spring also creates a stir in our office.  At the CRHC offices our halls are buzzing with activity as we prepare for the Forum.  This year we have over 170 people registered, representing 71 percent of our RHCs.  Thank you for your continued engagement!  And thank you to our Gold Sponsor, The University of Colorado Cancer Center, and our additional sponsors including The Colorado Trust, COPIC, SynAptiv and Kaiser Permanente.  Your support along with that of our exhibitors brings value and opportunities to our members while also helping us sustain affordable registration rates.

This year we are looking forward to hearing from our keynote, Joe Tye.  Mr. Tye is the CEO and Head Coach of Values Coach, Inc.  Mr. Tye’s presentation will describe practical strategies for making your organization a great place to work and for creating a sustainable source of competitive advantage by building on the “invisible architecture” of core value, corporate culture, and emotional attitudes.  In his book The Florence Prescription, he describes eight essential characteristics of a culture of ownership – commitment, engagement, passion, imitative, stewardship, belong, fellowship, and pride.  Join us to learn how to implement these characteristics into your organization.

The Forum is packed full of exciting presentations and our first day starts with a legislative update from Bill Finerfrock, a national expert in RHC policy and the CEO of the National Association of Rural Health Clinics.   You’ll also have the opportunity to learn more about how rural hospitals and clinics are working together to transform patient care and remain financially and operationally viable.  Presentations focused on care coordination, patient navigator activities, cost reporting, productivity, rules and regulations, physician wellness and understanding how to address provider stress, clinic culture and strategies for team effectiveness.

You may have begun hearing a lot about practice transformation and it has many spokes – quality, cost, access, use of the electronic medical record, use of data to start the conversation, and health of your community.  During the Forum we have several presentations in this area: Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes (ECHO) and the State Innovation Model (SIM) Project, Health Information Exchanges (HIEs), compliance, electronic medical records, and data reporting.

During the Forum I hope you take advantage of engaging with our staff to learn about the many opportunities available for you through CRHC such as a healthy clinic assessment, patient engagement, quality improvement, data, workforce recruitment, and health information technology.  Our mission is to ensure that we’re educating and offering a broad menu of technical assistance services to help you succeed.  We will be making the time to engage with you all to understand the unique needs of your facility.

If you haven’t registered, visit our website, you still have time!  This week we’ll be promoting some registration incentives for those referring attendees.  Please watch your inbox and social media for more details.  Thank you again for your continued commitment to rural health, and we look forward to seeing you in three weeks.