How RCM Automation Empowers Community Hospitals
Community hospital leaders are driven by a singular mission: ensuring their organizations deliver exceptional care to the patients and communities who depend on them. But while their hearts are in the right place, the reality is that mounting administrative burdens and financial pressures often overshadow their ability to focus on what matters most.
- Meet ACHE’s New Elected Officials
- Innovation Is Key to Quality, Safety Improvements
- Using a Holistic Approach to Enterprise Risk Management
- Earn Points When You Share the Value of ACHE Membership
Meet ACHE’s New Elected Officials
ACHE’s 2025–2026 Chair Officers were installed March 22 during the Council of Regents meeting preceding ACHE’s 68th Congress on Healthcare Leadership. They include:
- Chair: Michele K. Sutton, FACHE, president/CEO, North Oaks Health System, Hammond, La. Get to know ACHE’s new chair in this profile about her professional journey and her plans for ACHE in the year ahead.
- Chair-Elect: Noel J. Cárdenas, FACHE, senior vice president/CEO, Memorial Hermann Southeast and Pearland Hospitals, Houston.
- Immediate Past Chair: William P. Santulli, FACHE, operating partner, Water Street Healthcare Partners, Chicago.
Additionally, four new Governors were elected to serve three-year terms on the Board of Governors. Each took office March 22. They include:
- Jennifer D. Alderfer, FACHE, president, Lifepoint Health, Western Division, Brentwood, Tenn.
- Corwin N. Harper, FACHE, president, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of Georgia, Atlanta.
- Bonnie J. Panlasigui, FACHE, senior vice president, Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara Service Area, Calif.
- Peter J. Wright, FACHE, president/CEO, Northwestern Medical Center, St. Albans, Vt.
Finally, 17 healthcare executives were elected to serve three-year terms on ACHE’s Council of Regents, and two have been appointed to serve as Regents-at-Large for District 3 and District 5. The Regents also took office March 22 at the Council of Regents Meeting. In addition, four Regents were appointed to represent members on an interim basis in New Hampshire, North Dakota, Rhode Island and Tennessee, and one Regent-at-Large has been appointed on an interim basis to serve District 1.
ACHE thanks Board members and Regents who completed their terms in 2025 for their commitment to healthcare leadership. Visit Board of Governors to learn more about ACHE’s leadership structure.
Innovation Is Key to Quality, Safety Improvements
Healthcare organizations are producing tangible strategies to address diagnostic errors—one of the industry’s most pressing quality and safety concerns. Between April 2023 and March 2024, safety improvements allowed an estimated 200,000 patients to survive episodes of care they wouldn’t have in 2019, according to the American Hospital Association.
Northwestern Medicine’s Academy for Quality and Safety Improvement trains interdisciplinary teams of clinicians to solve specific problems in their units and departments. “Many practicing professionals don’t receive quality improvement training during their education and post-graduate work,” says Kevin J. O’Leary, who oversees the academy as vice president of quality for Northwestern Memorial HealthCare. “AQSI helps fill that gap in our system.”
Anticipating problems earlier helps create care plans with dynamic and realistic expectations. The VA’s Surgical Pause tool, for example, encourages surgeons to assess frailty and discuss potential risks with patients and families.
Kaiser Permanente Northern California’s Automated Advance Alert Monitor analyzes more than 100 clinical variables hourly to create a patient picture that has significantly reduced ICU admissions among hospitalized patients, according to Robin Betts, RN, vice president of safety, quality and regulatory services. Betts says that these types of predictive models will augment capabilities, strengthening the ability “to anticipate, rather than react.”
Safety and quality initiatives require resources, but the benefits offer a huge return on investment. Dive deeper into the inspiration, lessons and ideas provided in “Pathways to Improved Quality and Safety,” in the March/April issue of Healthcare Executive.
Using a Holistic Approach to Enterprise Risk Management
Enterprise risk management for healthcare systems requires a proactive, integrated approach that anticipates and manages all potential threats to an organization’s strategic objectives. These dangers can include financial risks, operational disruptions, cybersecurity incidents, reputational damage, regulatory compliance failures and natural disasters. With such a variety of potential threats, healthcare organizations cannot afford to be siloed in their risk management efforts. The Spring 2025 issue of Frontiers of Health Services Management presents a holistic approach to ERM, which is more essential now than ever as the interconnectedness of risks intensifies.
Maxine dellaBadia Simon, FACHE, chief regulatory officer, NYU Langone Health, New York City, says, “Emergency preparedness is an integral component of ERM, and it is also a clear example of how proactive management within a high-reliability culture catalyzes an organization’s pursuit of excellence.” In her article “Pursuing Enterprise Management Excellence in Emergency Preparedness,” dellaBadia explains why effective risk reduction must include a highly functioning emergency preparedness program to address potential disruptions to daily activities during unexpected or potentially unfavorable events. Although operational leaders cannot predict every type of event, they need to ensure that their emergency preparedness program is adaptive enough to support mission-critical components of the organization.
Learn more about this holistic approach in the current issue of Frontiers of Health Services Management.
Earn Points When You Share the Value of ACHE Membership
Like Nancy A. Susick, RN, FACHE, you, too, can get rewarded for recruiting colleagues to join ACHE or encouraging Members to advance to Fellow through the Leader-to-Leader Rewards Program. In addition to earning points, those who recruit or advance the most members in one of three areas—hospitals and healthcare settings, academia or the military—are recognized at the Congress on Healthcare Leadership during the Malcom T. MacEachern Memorial Lecture and Luncheon.
Susick, who recruited the most members from hospitals and healthcare settings, participated in the program last year and found value beyond the perk of reward points. “It is important to me to give back and encourage other healthcare professionals to become members of ACHE,” she says. “The Leader-to-Leader Rewards Program is a great mechanism for me to encourage others to join ACHE and start receiving the multiple benefits that I have received,” she says.
This program recognizes ACHE Members with reward points that can be redeemed for discounts on ACHE education programs and books or a selection of ACHE merchandise. Members can redeem points as soon as they earn them or until Dec. 31 in the year after points were earned. Points are automatically awarded when new Members or prospective Fellows list a current Member name on their applications and complete the join/advance process.
Visit Leader-to-Leader Rewards Program to learn more. If you have questions, contact the Customer Service Center at (312) 434-9400 or contact@ache.org.