Speakers for the NAHC 27th Annual Meeting

NAHC always prides itself in bringing top flight speakers to address its membership. The NAHC Annual Meeting Committee, the NAHC Board and the NAHC Strategic Planning Congress (which meets every January) help guide the decisions about who to ask to Keynote the meeting.

Another consideration is the theme of the annual meeting which is chosen to reflect what is going on in the health care environment or will be at the time of the annual meeting. The theme for 2008 will be: Home Care & Hospice: Charting New Frontiers in Health Care The theme is supposed to convey the idea that by now it is obvious to policymakers and the media that home care is the best answer to the nation’s growing long term care crisis. The question is what can be done by individual organizations together with NAHC to realize the promise of making home care and hospice the central part of health care in America.

There are many factors responsible for boosting the stock of home care including, technology, cost effectiveness, greater public awareness of home care and a strong preference for continuing to receive care at home instead of in an institutional setting. Perhaps the most important reasons of all, however, are the graying of America and the press of demographics. To really understand the place of home care in the future, a person needs to understand how the world is being changed by the imminent graying of the baby boom generation -- all 78 million of them -- who are only five years away from beginning to reach retirement years.

Speakers are selected to inspire and inform the leaders of America’s home care and hospice community and to encourage them to continue to care for every person as if he or she was someone they loved. The stated goal is to help the leadership of America’s home care & hospice community to become even more efficient and more successful, improving the quality of care while still treating every person they see as if she or he was a parent, child or someone they love.

Sunday, October 12, 2008 from 3–5pm

The Home Care & Hospice Excellence in Innovation Award Presentation to Award Winner

The Home Care & Hospice Excellence in Innovation Award has been created to recognize successful and innovative home care programs in the United States.

Judy Woodruff
Author, Broadcast Journalist with CNN, Inside Politics, NBC, CBS and Humanitarian

Judy Woodruff is famous in the field of broadcast journalism for her integrity, intelligence, and commitment to public service. She’s best known as anchor of CNN’s Inside Politics, the first daily program dedicated to the subject. Since joining CNN in 1993, she’s developed several innovations, such as running a mobile newsroom during the 2004 presidential election. In her frequent travels, she moderated the first presidential forum of Democratic candidates in 2003 and the final debate between Bush and Kerry in 2004. She’s also led network coverage of the Iraq War, the 9/11 attacks, and the Space Shuttle Columbia tragedy. Before joining CNN in 1993, she spent 11 years at The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, where she was chief Washington correspondent and anchor of Frontline with Judy Woodruff. Before that, she covered politics for NBC and WAGA-TV in Atlanta. She’s received many honors, including the 2002 Edward R. Murrow Award for coverage of the 9/11 attacks and an Emmy for coverage of the Centennial Olympic Park Bombing. She supports numerous philanthropic organizations and has gained particular recognition for efforts to fight spina bifida. She’s founding co-chair of the International Women’s Media Foundation and author of This is Judy Woodruff at the White House.

Monday, October 13, 2008 from 12–1pm

Former President Bill Clinton
Founder, The Clinton Foundation, and 42^nd President of the United States

Bill Clinton was born on August 19, 1946, in Hope, Arkansas. As a delegate to Boys Nation while in high school, he met President John Kennedy in the White House Rose Garden. The encounter led him to enter a life of public service. Clinton graduated from Georgetown University and in 1968 won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University. He received a law degree from Yale University in 1973, and shortly thereafter entered politics in Arkansas.

He was defeated in his campaign for Congress in Arkansas's Third District in 1974. The next year he married Hillary Rodham, a graduate of Wellesley College and Yale Law School. In 1980, Chelsea, their only child, was born. Clinton was elected Arkansas Attorney General in 1976, and won the governorship in 1978. After losing a bid for a second term, he regained the office four years later, and served until his 1992 bid for the Presidency of the United States.

Elected President of the United States in 1992, and again in 1996, President Clinton was the first Democratic president to be awarded a second term in six decades. Under his leadership, the United States enjoyed the strongest economy in a generation and the longest economic expansion in U.S. history. President Clinton's core values of building community, creating opportunity, and demanding responsibility resulted in unprecedented progress for America, including moving the nation from record deficits to record surpluses; the creation of over 22 million jobs-more than any other administration; low levels of unemployment, poverty and crime; and the highest homeownership and college enrollment rates in history. His accomplishments as president include increasing investment in education, providing tax relief for working families, helping millions of Americans move from welfare to work, expanding access to technology, encouraging investment in underserved communities, protecting the environment, countering the threat of terrorism and promoting peace and strengthening democracy around the world. His Administration's economic policies fostered the largest peacetime economic expansion in history. President Clinton previously served as the Governor of Arkansas, chairman of the National Governors' Association and Attorney General of Arkansas. As former chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, he is one of the original architects and leading advocates of the Third Way movement.

The Clinton Foundation and its Work
After leaving the White House, President Clinton established the William J. Clinton Foundation with the mission to strengthen the capacity of people in the United States and throughout the world to meet the challenges of global interdependence. To achieve this, the Clinton Foundation is focused on four critical areas: health security, with an emphasis on HIV/AIDS; economic empowerment; leadership development and citizen service; and racial, ethnic and religious reconciliation. The Clinton Presidential Center, located in Little Rock, Arkansas, is comprised of the Library, the archives, Clinton Foundation offices and the Clinton School of Public Service.

Following the 2002 Barcelona AIDS Conference, President Clinton began the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative (CHAI) to assist countries in implementing large-scale, integrated, care, treatment and prevention programs that will turn the tide on the epidemic. It partners with countries in Africa, the Caribbean and Asia to develop operational business plans to scale-up care and treatment. CHAI works with individual governments and provides them with technical assistance, human and financial resources, and know-how from the sharing of the best practices across projects. The ultimate objective in each of these countries is to scale up public health systems to ensure broad access to high-quality care and treatment. The Initiative's long-term goal is to develop replicable models for the scale-up of integrated programs in resource-poor settings. CHAI is currently bringing life-saving care and treatment to over a quarter of a million people around the world.

In September 2005, President Clinton hosted the inaugural meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI). CGI is a non-partisan catalyst for action, bringing together a community of global leaders to devise and implement innovative solutions to some of the world's most pressing challenges. The meeting brings together hundreds of leaders from governments, the business community, and NGOs who contribute to innovative solutions to alleviate poverty, promote effective governance, reconcile religious conflicts, and protect the environment. Nearly 300 commitments were made to improve the lives of people living on 6 continents, with private corporations and non-profit organizations pledging almost 70% of all commitments, which are valued in excess of $2.5 billion.

In the United States, President Clinton also works through the Clinton Foundation Urban Enterprise Initiative to help small businesses acquire the tools they need to compete in the ever-changing urban marketplace.

He also works along with the American Heart Association on the Alliance for a Healthier Generation to combat childhood obesity and reverse this deadly trend facing American children.

Following Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, President Clinton and former President Bush led a nationwide fundraising effort and established the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund to assist survivors in the rebuilding effort.

This campaign was the second collaboration for the former presidents, the first being their work on relief and recovery following the Indian Ocean tsunami. President Clinton also served as the United Nations Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery for two years following the 2004 tsunami.

Val J. Halamandaris
President, NAHC

Val J. Halamandaris is the founding president of NAHC, having served in this position since 1982. He has been described as a visionary and as a renaissance man because he is an attorney, editor, publisher, producer of films, author, and acclaimed public speaker.

In 1982, Mr. Halamandaris helped make NAHC into one of the country’s most respected organizations. He helped found the Center for Health Care Law, a public interest law firm, and created the Frederick Douglass Museum and Hall of Fame for Caring Americans. He helped unify the home care industry and increased membership from 300 to over 5,000 organizations. Under his guidance, NAHC has helped raise public awareness and acceptance of home care from 10 to more than 80 percent of the US public.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008 from 8–10am

Doris Kearns Goodwin
Pulitzer Prize-winning Author, Presidential Historian

Doris Kearns Goodwin is an expert on the American presidency and that quintessential American sport, baseball. She’s the author of award-winning books, a contributor to leading publications, and an NBC news analyst. She’s been involved both on and off the air in PBS documentaries on LBJ, the Kennedy family, FDR, and Ken Burns’ “History of Baseball.” She received a B.A. from Colby College and a Ph.D. from Harvard, where she taught government for 10 years. Afterward, she served as assistant to LBJ during his last year as president and later helped him prepare his memoirs. In 1976, her book Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream was a New York Times bestseller. Her next book, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, was made into a six-hour miniseries that aired on ABC in 1990. Then in 1995, she received a Pulitzer Prize for No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II. In 1997, she wrote Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir about growing up in love with family and baseball. Her most recent work is Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. A 2005 bestseller, it’s the basis of a forthcoming biopic by Steven Spielberg.

Alison Levine
Leader of the First American Women's Everest Expedition and Founder of the Climb High Foundation

Alison Levine is no stranger to risk-taking. She has survived sub-zero temperatures, hurricane-force winds, sudden avalanches and a career on Wall Street. Levine has “accidentally” scaled seven summits, while also climbing the corporate ladder. She is one of the most experienced female mountaineers in the country. In 2002, Levine was invited to serve as the team captain of the first American Women’s Everest Expedition, a history-making climb that would put her to the test.

An avid explorer and adventurer, Levine also traveled across the Arctic Circle on skis to successfully reach the top of the world – the geographic North Pole. Her success in extreme environments is noteworthy given Levine suffers from Raynaud’s Disease, which causes the arteries that feed her fingers and toes to collapse in cold weather, leaving her at extreme risk for frost bite.

Levine is founder and President of Daredevil Strategies, a consulting firm specializing in organizational effectiveness, leadership and team dynamics. Drawing parallels between staying alive in the mountains and thriving in the business world, Levine focuses on the topics of leadership, teamwork, overcoming odds, tackling fear, taking risks and dealing with changing environments.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008 from 8:30 – 11:30am

Note: The Closing General Session will take place at the Fort Lauderdale Grande Hotel, located at 1881 S.E. 17th Street, directly across the street from the Greater Fort Lauderdale/Broward County Convention Center.

Charting the Course to the Future of American Health Care: The Central Role of Home Care in Physician-Led Chronic Disease Management

U.S. health care over the past 40 years has been successful in reducing mortality and extending the lifespan of Americans. However, as mortality has been set back, there has been a correlative increase in morbidity. What this means is that more people are living longer but in doing so they are living with disabilities. Some 90 percent of adult Americans have at least one chronic disease. The incidence of such diseases increases with age; seniors, aged 75 and older, suffer from an average of four major chronic diseases.

It is also true that chronic disease accounts for a disproportionate share of U.S. health care expenditures: 5 percent of the U.S. population is responsible for 41 percent of total health care costs; 12 percent of the public with such complex medical problems accounts for 69 percent of all expenditures. The U.S. health care system has been designed primarily to address acute care needs; however, within the past few years there has been a growing consensus in America on the need to change the health care focus to chronic disease. The goal, of course, is providing better health care, maximizing functioning, reducing unnecessary hospital admissions, increasing efficiencies and thereby saving millions of dollars.

Several different models have been advanced related to chronic disease management, one of which is called “The Medical Home.” In recent weeks legislation has been introduced by Senator Ron Wyden (R-Ore.) and Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass.) titled the “Independence at Home Act” (S. 3613/H.R. 7114); earlier in this Congress Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) introduced S. 1340, the “Geriatric Assessment and Chronic Care Coordination Act of 2007,” which would create a pilot program for chronic disease management based on a model developed by Baptist Home Health Network of Little Rock, Ark. All of these have in the common the fact that they are physician-driven. The premise is that given support from case managers, nurses, therapists and aided by telehealth, seniors can be followed for between six months and a year with the physician and his team being paid a portion of the health care dollars they have saved by keeping people from being hospitalized. The home care community has already made a convincing case that it can provide the infrastructure to carry out these functions rather than physicians being required to create new ones, and that working with physicians they can accomplish the goals stated in the last paragraph.

This session examines the several models of chronic disease management and explores the ways in which physicians and the home care community can work together in a program that will transform health care.

• Val J. Halamandaris, President of NAHC, Moderator

• William A. Dombi, Vice President for Law, NAHC, Overview

• The Baptist Hospital Model of Chronic Disease Management – Beth Hennessey, Administrator, Baptist Home Health Network; Paula Suter, Director of Chronic Care Management, Baptist Home Health Network; and Greg Harrison, Business Development Manager, Baptist Home Health Network, Little Rock, Ar.

• The Oxford Approach to Chronic Disease Management – Karen Thomas, President, Oxford Healthcare Home Health Agency, Springfield, Mo.

• The Promise of the Independence at Home Act – Peter Boling, M.D., Director of Long-term Care and Geriatrics, Interim Division Chair, Division of General Medicine, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Va.

• The Medical Home – Robert Berenson, M.D., Senior Fellow at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C.(invited)

• Bringing it all Together – William J. Borne, CEO of Amedisys, Inc., Baton Rouge, La.

Sunday, October 12, 2008 at the CEO Leadership School

Ann Rhoades
Founder and President, People Ink, Former Human Resources for Southwest and JetBlue Airlines

Ann is a dynamic human resources executive and self-described “rule breaker.” In the course of over 25 years, she’s used her “people-centric” approach to help organizations go from good to great. At Southwest Airlines, she solidified the company’s reputation for a stellar work force. At Promus Hotel Corporation, she built a culture based on outstanding service. And she created JetBlue Airway’s People Team in New York. Still a board member at JetBlue, she now has a consulting firm that brings her ideas to a broader market, especially the health care industry. She serves on patient safety and quality task forces at Texas Medical Institute of Technology, and she’s co-founder of CareLeaders Corporation, which helps hospitals boost their performance. This commitment to quality inspires her community involvement, including service with Albuquerque Community Foundation, Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Safer New Mexico Now, and the University of New Mexico. Whether focusing on health care or hospitality, she urges HR professionals to try out new roads. “The great promise of HR,” she says, “is that you can have a huge impact on any organization. When you understand that, you act differently, you make better choices. And you are more confident in taking risks and daring to speak the truth.”

Dale Brown
Motivational Speaker and Former Basketball Coach, Louisiana State University

“The best potential of me is we,” Dale recently told a crowd in Dakota. This credo has earned him fame as a coaching legend and “master motivator.” It’s a good thing he had a winning approach when he first arrived at LSU. In 1972, LSU basketball was second to football in everything from fan support to the budget. Determined to make the Tigers a fan favorite, he travelled the state handing out purple and gold nets and poems asking folks to give the team a chance. He also caught their attention by winning four Southeastern Conference championships and twice reaching the NCAA Final Four. But his competitive streak didn’t kill his sense of compassion. This was clear when three players asked him for money to visit a dying teammate in St. Louis. Brown knew this violated NCAA rules governing off-campus entertainment. Yet “I gave them the money,” he says, “and I’d do it again.” He’s continued to give as head of a foundation that provides scholarships for needy students and as a dynamic public speaker. “It is a law of life,” he tells groups, “that to live fully, we must learn to use things and love people – not love things and use people.”

The following speakers have been invited and will appear subject to their acceptance.

S. Truett Cathy
Founder, Chick-fil-A Company

S. Truett Cathy likes to say that his famous chicken sandwich has “character.” You can tell he does too. Since opening his first restaurant in 1946, Cathy has built a fast-food kingdom dedicated to doing good while serving the public good food. A devout man who grew up going to church, Cathy tries to apply Christian principles to business practices. Cathy acknowledges that all his workers are God’s children by closing on Sundays and sponsoring scholarships for long-term employees. The result is a high employee retention rate that has helped Chick-fil-A hit over $1 billion in yearly sales. No doubt it’s worth crossing the road for one of Cathy’s classic chicken sandwiches, especially when you consider how he uses his wealth to help others. Starting in 1984, his WinShape Foundation has funded children’s camps, sponsored mission trips throughout the world, and provided foster care for children who need secure, loving homes. Society has recognized Cathy’s contributions by giving him the National Caring Award, Horatio Alger Award, and Family First Ambassador Award. These honors show Cathy has come up with a proven recipe for success. It’s based on his belief that, “We should put principles and people ahead of profits.”

Marilyn Carlson Nelson
CEO and Chair, Carlson Companies

Marilyn is head of Carlson Companies and a firm believer in an inclusive company culture. “The mission-driven CEO,” she says, “has to serve all stakeholders: the shareholders, of course, but also the employees, the customers, the community, and the nation.” She inherited this commitment to service from her father, founder of her family’s travel services empire. When she took the reins in 1998, she quickly created an in-house day care center and company cafeteria. The returns she got in terms of employee loyalty and team building helped her make Carlson one of the world’s largest privately held companies. Forbes has regularly called her one of “The World’s Most Powerful Women,” and U.S. News & World Report has named her one of “America’s Best Leaders.” She serves on the boards of Exxon Mobil, the Mayo Clinic, and the Committee to Encourage Corporate Philanthropy. Following family tradition, she gives charity 5 percent of her company’s pre-tax earnings and heads numerous nonprofit boards. She’s earned a National Caring Award and membership in the French Legion of Honor for exemplary acts based on her inclusive vision of humanity. “As one suffers, we all suffer,” she says. “As one is glorified, we all are glorified.”

Annual Meeting Advertising Marketing Opportunities – Exhibiting Opportunities