As reported in a release by the American Hospital Association (AHA), for more than two years, America’s hospitals and health systems, and their millions of caregivers and front-line team members, have demonstrated courage and compassion as they’ve worked tirelessly to care for and protect their patients and communities.
Recognizing the new environment we are in, the AHA has developed a three-year strategic plan (2022-2024) featuring five strategic pillars that will guide the association’s work in order to:
AHA’s Strategic Plan sets forth five strategic objectives or pillars that will guide the association’s work as we advance health in America. With input and direction from the AHA Board of Trustees, the framework includes an ambitious set of goals:
- Provide Better Care and Greater Value
- Ensure the Financial Stability of Hospitals and Health Systems
- Enhance Public Trust and Confidence in Hospitals and Health Systems
- Address Workforce Challenges: Now, Near and Far
- Improve the Healthcare Consumer Experience
Pillars and Goals:
- Advance value-based care models
- Integrate equity metrics and targets in all care analytics
- Optimize care flexibility in site of care
- Accelerate the adoption of precision medicine and application of artificial intelligence/advancing technologies
- Transform chronic/complex disease and end-of-life care
Ensure the Financial Stability of Hospitals and Health Systems:
- Address inefficiencies in intersection of acute care to the U.S. public health care system
- Protect rural health capacity
- Assess the future of academic medical centers
- Create and execute a sustainability agenda
- Restructure the supply chain on a national and regional level
Enhance Public Trust and Confidence in Hospitals and Health Systems:
- Amplify the positives and counteract the negatives
- Produce scholarship in support of strategy
- Promote health literacy
- Address social media misinformation
- Combat erosion of trust in science
Address Workforce Challenges: Now, Near and Far:
- Enact a multi-pronged effort to address workforce supply
- Advance and accelerate new care models for inpatient and ambulatory settings
- Introduce and improve resilience capacity
- Reskill current workforce
- Maintain regulatory reforms gained during the pandemic
Improve the Healthcare Consumer Experience:
- Establish consumerism metrics, including baseline and targets for improvement
- Enhance rapid digitization of business and clinical processes
- Curate best-in-class digital practices and provide resources to scale
- Improve business and clinical analytic capabilities
- Prepare for the next public health emergency and define our role in response
AHA advocacy efforts center on positively influencing the public policy environment for patients, communities and the health care field. The AHA advances key issues through a variety of advocacy strategies such as:
- Grassroots efforts through the mobilization of millions of individual supporters
- ‘Grass-tops’ action to amplify our voice through key media and stakeholders
- Sustained engagement with top policymakers
- Legal advocacy to protect and support hospitals, patients and communities in the courts
- Data-driven research regarding the impact of potential policy changes
- Telling the hospital story and focused advertising through a variety of media
- Provide leadership to the Coalition to Protect America’s Health Care to ensure that hospitals and health systems have the resources necessary to provide access to high quality care.
