CEO Messages

For some time, rural hospitals – the facilities in our state facing the greatest threat to their existence – have needed help. This year, in several key ways, the Texas Legislature provided a helping hand. But there remains work to do.

For years, hospitals here in Texas have been experiencing that opposite: We’ve been hurting as our personnel numbers have waned. But now – after a legislative session in which the Texas Hospital Association stressed workforce again and again – we’ve got the barbells, bands and machinery to regain much of our lost strength.

Defense wins championships, the age-old expression goes in sports. Politics is sport in and of itself, and THA had to play some serious defense during the just-concluded session of the Texas Legislature. Now, the work begins to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.

If there’s one theme you’ve seen me come back to in this column in the past year or so, it’s this one: Hospitals need help.

It wasn’t long ago that that overwhelming numbers of people across Texas and the nation – on all sides of the political spectrum – knew and acknowledged that vaccines prevent diseases.

An unfortunate reality in today’s world of fast-spreading information is, well, misinformation. With the internet and social media affording a potentially unvetted voice to just about everyone, misinformation is – ironically enough – a fact of life.

A recent Texas Hospital Association workforce survey reinforces and quantifies one fact that’s become abundantly clear: Hospitals are facing a breaking point for their workforce.

Earlier this month, the Texas Legislature gaveled in its 88th session, and what’s going on at our state Capitol will occupy a great deal of hospitals’ attention for the next four-plus months. If you’re a conscientious health care provider who wants the best possible care environment for your facility, city and state, I’m sure you’ll be following along, too.

As the pandemic tapers off, the need for hospitals has not. With surges of respiratory illnesses inundating emergency departments, hospitals – and hospital workers – remain our most unwavering line of defense.

We’ve all heard about bad things coming in threes. It’s a superstition that has persisted across generations and cultures. Any time three catastrophes happen to fall on top of each other, some point to it as a product of that old adage. There’s no scientific evidence of its validity, of course.