Author and consultant Ann Rhoades has great passion for health care, where she is making a significant contribution to revitalizing the workforce and culture of our nation's hospitals. She is a dynamic and visionary corporate executive with over 25 years experience in a variety of service-based industries, and has served on patient safety and quality task forces with the Texas Medical Institute of Technology involved in setting metrics used in pay-for-performance programs across the country.

Webinars are excellent learning opportunities led by ASHHRA members and partners with specific expertise in the health care HR profession. The following webinars will be taking place this month: March 15 – FMLA 2.0 March 23 – Communication Strategies to Help Provide Culturally Responsive Patient-Centered Care

ASHHRA, in collaboration with PwC Saratoga, formally invites you to participate in the 2016 HR Metrics Tool. The mission of this collaboration is to enable ASHHRA members to benefit from PwC Saratoga's expertise in HR analytics and knowledge of the health care field in order to obtain relevant benchmarks for workforce and HR metrics. Each participant will receive a personalized report that compares their organization's results against those of other participants.

Take a lunch break with ASHHRA and join fellow human resources and organizational development professionals in this lively monthly chat about the hottest topics in the field! Sponsored by the Learning & Education Committee of ASHHRA, we meet online the first Thursday of every month from 12:30-1:30 p.m. CT.

AHA News Seventeen companies that make an estimated 90 percent of the electronic health record products used by hospitals have pledged to help providers share health information for care whenever permitted by law, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Sylvia Burwell announced late last month. The AHA and some of the nation’s largest health care systems joined a number of national hospital, physician and health information organizations in also pledging their support for the interoperability principles.

AHA News Now This week, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services released a proposed rule to test new models for how Medicare Part B pays for prescription drugs provided in physician offices and hospital outpatient departments. CMS will accept comments on the proposed rule through May 9.

Anne Fisher, Fortune Every year, compensation firm PayScale does a massive survey on companies’ pay practices. But it’s not often that the researchers uncover as many huge gaps in perception as they did in this year’s report. To retain key employees, though, more talk may work better than more money.

Lena J. Weiner, HealthLeaders Media Health care HR executives have a not-so-secret weapon that can fill gaps in clinical expertise, augment staff, and aid in recruitment: Telemedicine. Would you prefer your employees work from home, or in an office? Is your health system having difficulty staffing around fluctuations in seasonal demand? Telemedicine can alleviate recruitment woes and fill staffing gaps — and it can rein in costs.

R. Timothy Rice, Modern Healthcare While health care leaders are focused on transforming their organizations amid constant change, the nature of their roles has changed quite a bit, particularly in their breadth, complexity and in the importance of supporting empowerment. All three require skill sets not readily learned in a traditional classroom and not reliably mastered in the workplace.

Leah Binder, Forbes Health care leaders are increasingly trying to import effective safety strategies from other industries in order to make their own safer for patients and providers. A recent conference hosted by Johns Hopkins’ Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality explored some of these ideas. Led by Armstrong’s director, MacArthur "Genius Grant" awardee Dr. Peter Pronovost, the conference examined examples of "high reliability" strategies used in manufacturing, transportation and other industries.

Philip Betbeze, HealthLeaders Media Health care leaders routinely mention the importance of patient engagement and experience. And a solid majority consider the patient-as-consumer trend to be an opportunity, according to the 2016 HealthLeaders Media Industry Survey. But it's pretty clear that provider organizations don't always share with these consumers all the information they need to make an informed decision. Why not?

Audrey Lyndon, PhD, Patient Safety Network Burnout is a syndrome characterized by emotional exhaustion that results in depersonalization and decreased personal accomplishment at work. In the past few years, the growing prevalence of burnout syndrome among health care personnel has gained attention as a potential threat to health care quality and patient safety.

HealthLeaders Media More than two dozen nurse executives from across the country gathered in Austin, Texas, last November for the first HealthLeaders Media CNO Exchange. This newest addition to the series of annual executive events focused on nursing's key role in care redesign, the challenge of recruiting and retaining nurses, and the evolving role of the chief nursing officer.

Urgent care clinics one of the fastest growing healthcare segments Monster Urgent care is one of the fastest growing segments in heath care, according to a report published in November 2015 by research firm IbisWorld. And almost 90 percent of urgent care centers — a.k.a. "walk-in clinics" — expected patient visits to increase and had plans for expansion in the coming year, according to Becker’s Hospital Review.