The other day we got a preview of the headwinds the hospital field can expect to face when the Maryland General Assembly session opens in seven weeks. MHA participated in a Senate committee briefing on facility fees. At the briefing, MHA highlighted our field’s proactive effort to improve transparency for patients.

You may have watched in recent weeks as California residents fled their homes while flames from wildfires inched closer and hospitals faced the daunting task of swiftly evacuating all their patients.

Like many of you, I spent much of October staying up past my bedtime, bingeing on ice cream, and shouting at the TV—all while watching the Washington Nationals in inning after inning of nail-biting baseball. Fortunately, the elevated stress paid off. And, even if they hadn’t won the final game, it would’ve been worth it.

Maryland Senate President Mike Miller’s recent announcement that he will step down from the leadership position he held for 33 years marks a seismic change for the chamber. Though Miller intends to remain a senator, his absence at the dais will be felt in Annapolis.

Recently the Maryland Department of Health (MDH) released a new Diabetes Action Plan that aims to create conditions conducive to better health and reduce the impact of diabetes on Marylanders. MDH understands the plan will require an “all in” effort from a wide variety of actors, including state and local policymakers, payers, employers, school boards and administrators, community groups and others.

A groundswell of support is forming at the state and national levels to make hospital billing more understandable and transparent for our patients. Feeding that push are nearly daily headlines about patients who received bills that exceeded their expectations, people who were confused after receiving two bills for what looked like the same service, and hospitals’ efforts, legitimate as they may be, to collect on unpaid debts.

To best position Maryland hospitals and health systems for the future, partnering with state and local agencies is key. To that end, MHA participates in a group Secretary of Health Robert Neall convenes to help ensure the Maryland Model reaches its aims of better care and better health.

Your hospitals compose the Maryland Hospital Association, and in turn, the association is the hospitals. Your needs, concerns and direction drive our work. And, thus MHA’s success is yours.

To best support your needs, MHA must constantly balance the demand to address current issues while anticipating opportunities and challenges to come. Last Thursday and Friday, MHA’s Executive Committee of the Board met to ponder the issues shaping health care in Maryland over the next decade.

Last week AHA held a biennial national meeting of all nine Regional Policy Boards. CMS Administrator Seema Verma spoke on the final day, delivering strong words on the federal government’s push toward value-based payment. “We must move past the status quo, and past a fee-for-service payments to a system in which we’re paying providers to keep people healthy, reduce costs and deliver better outcomes,” she noted.

A bipartisan effort to address surprise medical bills is expected to be among lawmakers’ top priorities when Congress returns this week from August recess. MHA is engaged on the issue —including the House’s No Surprises Act and Senate’s Lower Health Care Cost Act—and has been since it arose months ago.

Every day thousands of committed health care professionals come to work in your hospitals to ensure we deliver the highest quality care to patients. That puts you among the state’s largest employers — directly employing 107,000 people, supporting 113,000 related jobs, and contributing more than $30 billion each year to our state’s economy.

MHA recently returned from the Maryland Association of Counties conference, where our team met with state and local leaders, lawmakers, policymakers and influencers to advocate and better position us as we head into the 2020 legislative session.

Mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio about one week ago put physicians, nurses and other health care workers once again on the front lines of tragedy. We grieve for the victims and admire the resolve of these first responders to act quickly and skillfully to care for the injured and help their communities heal.

We know from media reports, legislative action, and comments from community members that health care bills often confuse and distress patients. Concerns have amplified since insurers started to narrow their networks and to raise consumer cost-sharing to ever greater levels.​

Scrutiny in the media and among lawmakers in Annapolis has called into question the soundness of governance of our hospitals and health systems. Those pursuing this line of inquiry are not finished. We expect this matter to gain steam again as the 2020 legislative session approaches.​

Affordable health care coverage is essential for people to have access to the care they need. It is particularly important in Maryland, where our success under the Total Cost of Care Model rests on improving the health of the state’s entire population. We can’t prevent unnecessary hospital use unless more Marylanders can afford coverage.

All Marylanders deserve an equal opportunity to achieve optimal health — regardless of social, economic, or demographic differences. Though we all share this goal, health disparities persist stubbornly.

We talk a lot these days about the social determinants of health – those things other than genetics, personal choices, and health care that affect how healthy each of us will be. In discussions I’ve had recently, it’s striking how often food insecurity is mentioned as a top challenge – especially given Maryland’s high per capita income.

Our state’s hospitals and health systems continue to strive for new and different ways to transform care. To support that work, your Maryland Hospital Association is leading the Stakeholder Innovation Group (SIG) which convened at the request of the Maryland Health Secretary Robert Neall. Part of the group’s work was the launch of the Innovations for Better Health website. This inventory demonstrates what we already knew: Hospitals and care providers are working together to innovate and advance health care for all Marylanders.