With VNAA’s 28th Annual Meeting in Orlando just days away, I’m working furiously to digest every key part of the new healthcare reform law.  Its famous length, something in excess of 2,400 pages, is a testament to its ambitions and reach.  As nonprofit home health and hospice leaders gather to check out the latest in best practices, to network, to forge new partnerships, and to soak up Florida’s warmth, rest assured everyone will be asking:  “What does reform mean for my agency and my patients?”

It will take months, even years, to answer that question, but there will be dozens of clues available at the Orlando meeting.  For example, you can visit the CHAMP booth to see how its principles align in a striking way with the tenets of reform.  There is no way the healthcare reform package would have made it across the finish line were it not for its commitment to improving healthcare outcomes, aka, quality of care.  The legislation orders up a series of demonstrations and pilot projects designed to showcase the value of chronic care coordination, careful attention to transitions between settings, evidence-based practice, and team-oriented collaboration in serving patients.  All these ideas are at CHAMP’s very core.

Come visit the CHAMP booth and find out more about ways it can help your agency embody the values and vision of a quality driven healthcare system.  I’m willing to predict that within a decade, agencies embracing the CHAMP philosophy and approach will be the ones reformers will point to as vindication of their passionate and unyielding drive to overhaul healthcare.

Andy Carter, President and CEO
Visiting Nurse Associations of America