Learn about Harsh K. Trivedi, MD, President & CEO, Sheppard Pratt

This holiday weekend, we want to take a moment to honor and celebrate the incredible strength of the hospital workforce in Maryland. We thank you for your dedication, resilience, and unwavering commitment. Without you and your teams, many of our families, friends, and neighbors would not be with us.

Learn about Kevin Sowers, president of Johns Hopkins Health System, executive vice president of Johns Hopkins Medicine, and the chair of MHA Council on Legislative & Regulatory Policy in this edition of Member Spotlight.

Health equity is the cornerstone of a just and effective health care system for all. Despite progress made in Maryland hospitals and communities, disparities continue to persist, leading some populations to endure poorer health outcomes than others. We continue to strive for the highest level of health for all individuals, regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender, age, or socioeconomic status.

Learn about Tom Kleinhanzl, president of Frederick Health and the chair of MHA’s newly formed Board of Trustees, which began a three-year term July 1.

MHA recently made several changes to modernize our governance structure and ensure the Association remains nimble, responsive, and well-positioned to address the emerging challenges and opportunities in health care. MHA held elections during our Annual Membership Meeting last month, welcomed a new Board of Trustees, and implemented significant governance changes to drive your priorities forward.

More than 150 hospital and health system leaders attended MHA’s Annual Membership Meeting June 12-13 in Baltimore. We were joined by an impressive set of speakers, including special guest Gov. Wes Moore, and had an opportunity to celebrate our hospitals’ achievements and honor our legislative champions.

Maryland’s history-making governor, Wes Moore, plans to kick off our Annual Membership Meeting June 13. We look forward to an energetic, passionate address about his priorities for health and health care and how they align with our shared mission. His insights and vision for the future of health care have been well received, and we welcome this opportunity to show the Governor all we are doing to support a Better Maryland.

The MHA Annual Membership Meeting is June 12-13 at the Four Seasons Hotel Baltimore. Learn the the 7 reasons you should attend.

In the weeks before National Hospital Week, which begins today, MHA asked Marylanders to share how the care you and your hospitals deliver every day has made their life better.

Forensic nurse examiners care for patients who are survivors of violence. They improve the health of their communities by building partnerships and strengthening violence prevention and awareness.

The 2023 legislative session successfully concluded Monday with numerous wins for hospitals and health care in our state. Early advocacy, outreach, and education to and with lawmakers ensured all the hospital field priority bills to strengthen the hospital workforce passed overwhelmingly. That includes legislation to reform Maryland’s Board of Nursing, modernize physician credentialing, and invest in loan repayment.

Maryland’s behavioral health system of care is broken. This has been the case for some time and primarily affects your emergency departments, which are often the first point of contact or the facility of last resort for those in behavioral health crisis. (More on this in MHA’s new behavioral health one pager).

The most recent KaufmanHall National Hospital Flash Report points to persistent and ongoing financial challenges for hospitals. The report reflects what you are seeing in your own organizations—specifically double-digit wage increases to curb reliance on contract labor, sharp upticks in supplies and drugs, and increased costs to ensure physician access.

Your hospitals, like others nationwide, unfortunately are now accustomed to operating under extreme staffing shortages. Once-in-a-lifetime challenges have strained your workforce, but for the most part remain hidden from your patients.

The average wait time in a Maryland hospital emergency department—roughly 3.5 hours by one measure—has been in the spotlight, both in Annapolis and in the media. For a state considered a national leader in EMS and trauma care, our ED wait times have consistently been among the longest in the nation. Some of the causes are known, and some we are still uncovering.

With just two weeks until the General Assembly crossover deadline, MHA’s advocacy team and your government affairs leads have partnered together to make considerable progress on the field’s top priority—growing the health care workforce.

On Friday morning, Maryland Secretary of Health Laura Herrera Scott, M.D., visited the MHA offices to speak with and hear directly from hospital leaders. Secretary Herrera Scott shared that during her first 30 days she has begun a deep dive into the available data and an assessment of staffing, partnerships, and processes. She praised hospitals for their role as “an incredible partner in the state’s care delivery system.”

Today MHA is launching a new MHA Managing Patient Bias and Requests for Provider Concordance and Reassignment Toolkit. Developed with Erika McMullen, founder and CEO of Moxie Consulting Group and Dr. Nicole Rochester, founder and CEO of Your GPS Doc, the toolkit will help your teams navigate patient requests for provider concordance and reassignment and support colleagues that are facing bias—based on race, sex, religion, age, and more—from their patients.

Maryland’s unique financing system, the Total Cost of Care Model, acted as a shock absorber to the early effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, hospitals are not protected from events that have led to a “perfect storm” of financial challenges—record inflation for supplies, drugs, and equipment, as well as overwhelming labor costs. As a result, Maryland hospitals’ median operating margin was negative for 12 of the last 14 months. The latest monthly median margin was negative 1.4%. This compares to pre-pandemic margins of 2% to 3% on average.