CEO Update: Thank you for a Great Conference!
Thank you to all of our amazing members and partners that attended CRHC‘s Annual Rural Health Conference, a conference dedicated to the extraordinary and unique work that you do to provide access to care for Colorado’s rural and frontier communities.
It was great to see old friends and make some new ones. I’d also like to thank our sponsors and exhibitors: it is because of your support that we are able to keep the costs down for the conference.
We had so many great speakers during the conference including the Lt Governor Dianne Primavera discussing the ways the State is engaging on behalf of our rural communities.
The Annual Conference kicked off with a Keynote presentation from Kim Bimestefer, Executive Director at HCPF, addressing impacts to rural communities from Medicaid and the State’s efforts on healthcare affordability and the Public Option Report. We also had presentations on the Opioid Epidemic, State and Federal Rural Health Policy with CRHC’s Policy Analyst, Kelly Erb and CHA’s Manager of Public Policy, Amber Burkhart, as well as ‘Food is Medicine, Food is Health’, Auto HPSAs, Hospital Transformation Program, Strategies for Accessible and Affordable Health Care in the Rural Setting, CMS QPP, a “Get Funded” session with six foundations, and so many more! We even were able to add some wellness activities by practicing techniques to reduce stress called “Purposeful Pauses.”
For about four years now, staff from HCPF have been in attendance at CRHC’s Forum and Annual Conference so that members’ concerns can be addressed and their questions answered. Earlier this year, CRHC facilitated additional meetings with HCPF: one specific to RHCs and for the rural hospitals. For RHCs’, issues around reimbursement, collaboration with RAEs and prior authorization were addressed and for Hospitals, EAPGs’, Hospital Transformation Program and rural sustainability were discussed. From these meetings, it was determined that having rural specific meetings would best meet the needs of our members to ensure your voices are being heard. Our second official meeting took place last Friday, October 25th, which offered members the convenience of attending in person after our Annual Conference. Moving forward, regularly scheduled rural-specific meetings will begin in January 2020 and HCPF has dedicated a page to rural on their website, https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/hcpf/rural-hospital-and-rural-health-clinics
I’d like to thank the HCPF staff for their collaboration with our rural communities and we look forward to seeing/hearing everyone at the meetings in January.
