PORTLAND, Maine – March 14, 2024 – PRLog — Stroudwater Associates, the nation’s leading source for strategic, operational, financial, quality, and clinical strategy for rural and community healthcare, has announced its fourth-annual Critical Access Hospital (CAH) Regional Virtual Conferences.

The fourth-annual CAH Regional Conferences, taking place virtually across five US regions in June 2024, will provide rural hospital leaders with vital operational resources to help CAHs improve performance. Core subjects include swing bed optimization, cost report best practices, population health strategies, revenue cycle training, provider compensation, analytics, and other topics significant in rural and community healthcare. The sessions, presented by rural healthcare subject matter experts, also include case studies from State Offices of Rural Health, rural hospitals, and other partnership presenters with extensive backgrounds in rural healthcare.

Even as we emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic, many rural hospitals have not returned to pre-pandemic volumes and are now struggling with rapid input cost increases, workforce shortages and demands, and aging infrastructure.

“Rural hospital leaders desperately need practical tools that they can use to address the ever-changing challenges that they face daily to run their hospital,” said Stroudwater Associates Managing Director, Jeff Sommer, MPP. “Our regional conferences will arm them with the expertise they need to diagnose issues and improve operations, financial readiness, and clinical and quality outcomes.”

Representatives of over 327 CAHs across the five regions participated in last year’s CAH Regional Virtual Conferences and highlighted case studies and presenters specific to each region. Many state offices were also represented.  As a result, rural hospitals benefited from hearing how their peers addressed the daily challenges of operating a rural hospital.

“The success of rural hospitals directly impacts the communities that they serve, yet our industry remains heavily underrepresented. Our conference serves as an opportunity for leaders to collaborate, educate, and initiate positive change in the rural communities they represent,” said Stroudwater Associates’ Chairman, Eric Shell, MBA.

The 2024 CAH Regional Virtual Conferences will take place during the second and third weeks of June. Registrants are invited to register for the region specific to their state but are also welcome to register for sessions for other regions based on topics of interest and scheduling considerations. Each region is scheduled to accommodate the time zones within that region. To find more information or register for your state’s respective CAH Conference, visit Stroudwater’s registration page at https://www.stroudwater.com/fourth-annual-cah-regional-virtual-conferences/.

About Stroudwater Associates

Founded in 1985, Stroudwater Associates is a leading national healthcare consulting firm with an all-encompassing devotion to rural healthcare nationwide. With corporate offices in Portland, Maine, and Nashville, Tennessee, and experience working in all 50 states, we focus on strategic, operational, clinical, quality, and financial areas where our perspective offers the highest value for rural hospitals, community hospitals, healthcare systems, and large physician groups. Our consulting teams offer deep expertise and broad experience in strategic, financial, clinical, and operational areas.

PORTLAND, Maine – Jan. 17, 2023 – PRLog — Stroudwater Associates, the leading source of strategic, operational, and financial advisory services for rural, community, and county/district-owned hospitals, releases Rural Hospitals Must Keep Up with Innovation to Remain Viable; a white paper that details how rural and Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs), can remain viable in the ever-changing healthcare system.

Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, the market has evolved rapidly with emerging technology and telehealth services. Large corporations, such as Walmart, Walgreens, and CVS, have taken advantage of the tech-based urgent care, primary care, post-acute care, virtual care, and pharmacy services space. For rural hospitals and CAHs to compete with these industry disruptors, they must move away from the current fee-for-service (FFS) payment system and work toward the payment system of the future. By implementing a population-based system, hospitals will receive payment per capita and must determine how to care for a specific population within their service area. Recognizing that this new system is not easily implemented, Stroudwater Associates developed a strategic step-by-step system in order to help hospitals navigate through the transition.

The Stroudwater Transition Framework is composed of five key initiatives to help guide hospitals as they move to the new payment system. The initiatives unfold over time in three phases, beginning with full FFS and population-based payment system utilization. “There is no doubt that the last three years have been unprecedented for the rural healthcare environment, but we need to face reality,” said Stroudwater Associates Managing Director Jeff Sommer. “Hospitals need to recognize that the current model is dated. By utilizing the Transition Framework, hospitals have a chance against these large corporations.”

The Transition Framework was constructed by Stroudwater consultant, Eric Shell, MBA, CPA, a leader in rural healthcare financial management. As healthcare moves away from FFS reimbursement and toward population-based payment, Shell and his team at Stroudwater Associates provide critical financial and operational improvement services to ensure that rural hospitals continue to provide local, high-quality, and accessible patient care.

“Our team deeply understands how challenging it is for hospitals to transition from one payment system to another – to have a foot in both worlds, so to speak,” said Shell. “Despite that, we have seen tremendous success in guiding hospitals as they cross the ‘shaky bridge’ to a population-based payment system when using the Transition Framework. We know this new system will position hospitals to face the challenges of the current post-pandemic environment and beyond.”

To learn more about Stroudwater Associates’ Transition Framework, click here. (https://www.stroudwater.com/white-paper/rural-hospitals-m…)

About Stroudwater Associates

Founded in 1985, Stroudwater Associates is a leading national healthcare consulting firm with offices in Nashville, Atlanta, and Portland, Maine. Stroudwater focuses on strategic, operational, and financial areas where their perspective offers the highest value for rural hospitals, community hospitals, healthcare systems, and large physician groups. Stroudwater is made up of clinicians, directors, corporate officers, investment bankers, financial analysts, and content specialists with deep domain expertise.

PORTLAND, Maine – Jan. 20, 2022 – PRLog — Stroudwater Associates, the nation’s leading source for strategic, operational, financial, and clinical strategy for rural and community healthcare, announced today that it has surpassed its impact goals for 2021 and anticipates growth in 2022.

Over 20 rural hospitals have closed since the start of the pandemic, making it the largest loss of rural hospitals since the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services and Research started keeping records in 2005. To support rural communities and remaining hospitals through this enormous loss, Stroudwater Associates continued to build on its mission to partner with healthcare leaders to positively impact community health across the United States through new service offerings and enhancements to cloud-based applications.

In 2021, the advisory firm’s clinical team launched a prescription opioid management program to assist primary care clinics and provider practices in managing chronic-pain patients on long-term opioid therapy. The clinician-led team worked closely with the University of Washington Department of Family Medicine and Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute to become practice facilitators of the Six Building Blocks Program. Additionally, Stroudwater Associates’ analytics team developed and launched two cloud-based applications to help hospital leaders improve revenue, increase efficiency, and maximize pricing integrity.

“We are proud that our partnership with healthcare systems continues to positively impact rural communities across the country,” said Stroudwater Associates Managing Director Jeff Sommer. “It underscores our belief that by combining the power of our team with health system leaders, we can lift rural and community healthcare and transform it for the future needs of the 60 million Americans who depend on it.”

Stroudwater Associates 2021 impact by the numbers:

• Advised hospital and healthcare systems that serve communities consisting of 22.9 million people
• Served hospitals, health systems, and physician groups through 478 engagements
• Worked with clients and communities in 45 states

Through its strategic partnership with StroudwaterGCL, the organization had a greater impact with the closing of a loan with a hospital in New Jersey that serves a population size of over one million, forty-five thousand people.

To continue to build on its mission, Stroudwater Associates hired five new team members,

• Wade Gallon (https://www.stroudwater.com/team/wade-gallon/), MPA, FHFMA, supports clients through financial and operational analysis and cost report review
• Kirsten Meisterling (https://www.stroudwater.com/team/kirsten-meisterling/), MS advises hospitals and healthcare providers on physician-hospital alignment, physician practice, and hospital performance improvement
• Megan Zook assists consultants and clients as project coordinator and oversees timelines and deliverables
• Macey Spears is the relationship officer for StroudwaterGCL and works with clients on funding rural health investments
• Jolene Robichaud assists  StroudwaterGCL on projects, timelines, and client deliverables

“Stroudwater is continuing to grow, and the expansion of our team allows us to continue to better serve existing clients and work with more healthcare leaders,” says Stroudwater Board Chair Eric Shell. “The addition of new consultants speaks to our commitment to improving healthcare with the highest value of advisory services we can offer to clients and our team’s expert approach.”

To learn more about Stroudwater, visit www.stroudwater.com.

About Stroudwater Associates

Founded in 1985, Stroudwater Associates is a leading national healthcare consulting firm with offices in Atlanta, Nashville, and Portland, Maine. We focus on strategic, operational, and financial areas where our perspective offers the highest value for rural hospitals, community hospitals, healthcare systems, and large physician groups. Stroudwater’s team includes clinicians, managers, corporate officers, investment bankers, financial analysts, and content specialists with deep domain expertise.

Sources

“Why rural hospital closures hit a record high in 2020.” www.beckershospitalreview.com 16 March 2021. https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/why-rural-hospital-closures-hit-a-record-high-in-2020.html.

“How the pandemic killed a record number of rural hospitals.” www.cnn.com 31 July 2021. https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/31/health/rural-hospital-closures-pandemic/index.html