Rural Spotlight

HUD Research on Rural Housing

March 26, 2026

HUD Research on Rural Housing

The Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R) is a division within the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) that conducts research, data analysis, and program evaluations to inform housing policy.

This report examines housing challenges that are unique to rural communities, such as affordability, the physical inadequacy of homes, homelessness, difficulty in aging in place, and disaster response and recovery.

The report also describes federal, state, local, and private policy efforts to address these challenges, with details on three rural housing initiatives states have implemented to spur development and boost home ownership.

Click Here to Read Report

Rural Emergency Hospital: Progress, Resources, and Real-World Lessons

March 26, 2026

Rural Emergency Hospital: Progress, Resources, and Real-World Lessons

The Rural Emergency Hospital (REH) designation, created by Congress in 2020, is intended to preserve access to emergency and outpatient care in rural communities that may not be able to sustain a full hospital. Since the designation took effect in January 2023, 44 hospitals across the country are now operating as REHs. The Federal Office of Rural Health Policy (FORHP) funds a number of resources to support hospitals considering this transition including:

Webinar: Precision Medicine as Strategy: St. Luke’s Enterprise Approach, Marcy 27

March 26, 2026

Webinar: Precision Medicine as Strategy: St. Luke’s Enterprise Approach, Marcy 27

Health systems cannot afford fragmented specialty care or missed downstream opportunity.

Three years ago, St. Luke’s University Health Network made a deliberate decision to invest in precision medicine as a core enterprise priority. Through its DNA Answers program, the health system aligned clinical innovation with market strategy.

In this session, St. Luke’s leaders share how they moved from vision to execution and why timing, partnership structure and executive alignment made the difference.

Insights include:

  • The business case that elevated precision medicine to a board-level priority,
  • How St. Luke’s structured its partnership to move faster and avoid adoption barriers, and
  • The cultural shift sparked by patient stories and executive sponsorship.

Cost: Free

When: Friday, March 27, 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Click Here to Register

Webinar: Scaling AI with Confidence: Turning Early Use Cases Into Enterprise Value, March 26

March 24, 2026

Webinar: Scaling AI with Confidence: Turning Early Use Cases Into Enterprise Value, March 26

Healthcare leaders face daily tension: contact centers are overwhelmed, patient communication is fragmented, and staff workflows remain manual.

Add a crowded, fast-moving AI ecosystem, and the risk of missteps increases. Many health systems recognize AI’s promise but struggle to translate it into sustained operational and financial impact.

In this webinar, leaders from 42 North Dental and Unio Health Partners share what worked, what did not, and what they would approach differently if given a chance.

You’ll learn how organizations have:

  • Identified high-impact operational use cases for early AI winds,
  • Improved first-call resolution and reduced contact center strain, and
  • Established a scalable roadmap to deploy AI across the enterprise.

Cost: Free

When: Thursday, March 26, 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

Click Here to Register

Webinar: Beyond Cost Centers: Finding Margin Opportunity Through Encounter Level Variation, March 25

March 24, 2026

Webinar: Beyond Cost Centers: Finding Margin Opportunity Through Encounter Level Variation, March 25

Hospital margins remain under pressure, yet most organizations still rely on cost center reporting to understand profitability.

The problem is that cost centers rarely reveal where margin is truly gained or lost. Variation often occurs across providers, sites of care, and individual patient encounters – but traditional financial reporting makes it difficult to see.

In this session, we’ll discuss how external Cost & Margin benchmarks for healthcare organizations across the country connect financial, operational, and reimbursement data to reveal profitability at the encounter level.

With this level of insight, finance teams can uncover variation, identify margin opportunity, and better support strategic and operational decisions.

Insights include:

  • Why cost center reporting often hides meaningful margin variation,
  • How encounter-level cost and reimbursement data reveal true profitability drivers,
  • Where organizations are uncovering margin opportunities across providers and sites of care, and
  • How finance leaders are using these insights to support smarter operational and strategic decisions.

Cost: Free

When: Wednesday, March 25, 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.

Click Here to Register

MHA Conference: 2026 Leadership Forum, June 18-19

March 23, 2026

MHA Conference: 2026 Leadership Forum, June 18-19

Today’s health care environment is rapidly changing, and strong, aligned leadership has never been more essential. Missouri hospital executives, trustees and clinical leaders are navigating significant challenges — improving care while reducing costs, addressing workforce shortages and integrating new technologies in a sustainable, strategic way.

Meeting these challenges requires leaders who can guide their teams with clarity, resilience and optimism. Creating intentional space for leadership development and alignment is more important than ever.

MHA’s Leadership Forum brings together executive and clinical leaders alongside trustees and leadership teams to step back from day-to-day pressures, reconnect on shared priorities and chart a unified path forward. This forum — featuring nationally recognized leadership experts who deeply understand the realities of today’s health care landscape — is designed to help you think about your organization in new and sustainable ways.

The forum offers a valuable opportunity to align your board and leadership team, spark new ideas, and take-home actionable strategies to advance patient care and organizational performance.

You are invited to bring your trustees, executive team and clinical leaders to this event. You’ll leave inspired, connected and better equipped — not just as individual leaders, but as a cohesive team ready to shape the future of health care in Missouri.

This event is limited to MHA members only.

Cost: this event is coupon eligible

  • Early Bird Rate (register by April 17): $450
  • After April 17: $495

Click Here to Learn More and Register

Whitepaper: Quiet at Night: A New Path to Calmer, More Restful Hospital Nights

March 23, 2026

Whitepaper: Quiet at Night: A New Path to Calmer, More Restful Hospital Nights

How addressing unnecessary device alarms and managing them away from the bedside can help patient health and nurses focus.

Hospital noise levels have skyrocketed since the 1960s, turning patient rooms – especially at night – into spaces of fragmented sleep and stress. Much of the noise comes from medical device alarms that were designed to support safety but can interrupt patient recovery and overwhelm clinicians.

This paper explores how hospital leaders can restore rest and focus by tackling noise abd alarm fatigue at their source – combining workflow, culture and technology to address unnecessary alerts and route meaningful ones to the right clinicians.

Inside, you’ll learn:

  • What has caused hospitals to become so noisy – and what to do about it, including adjusting workflows and making environmental updates,
  • Practical ways to manage alarm load through smarter configurations,
  • How the new SDC interoperability standard for medical devices enables alarm receipt and response away from the bedside, and
  • Lessons from Cincinnati Children’s, which successfully silenced in-room monitors on med-surg units, and insights on ICU alarm culture from Grady Health System.

Click Here to Download Whitepaper

Webinar: IT Sprawl: The Risks, Costs, and Capital Hiding in Plain Sight, March 27

March 23, 2026

Webinar: IT Sprawl: The Risks, Costs, and Capital Hiding in Plain Sight, March 27

Healthcare organizations often assume that go-lives are the final step in major technology implementations. In reality, it marks the beginning of a new and more complex challenge: what remains.

At many health systems, legacy applications, redundant tools and unsupported software quietly accumulate over time, each adding incremental cyber exposure, compliance vulnerability and operational costs.

The result is mounting technical debt at a time when margins are compressed, AI investment is accelerating, and boards demand clearer financial accountability from IT leaders.

Application rationalization offers a path forward – but only when it is treated as a strategic discipline rather than a periodic cleanup effort.

In this session, two experts will outline how healthcare organizations can reframe rationalization as a lever for control, capital recovery and risk mitigation.

You will learn:

  • The financial, cyber and compliance risks embedded in unmanaged application portfolios,
  • How to quantify technical debt and its impact on margins and enterprise liability,
  • Why rationalization efforts stall – and how to overcome organizational resistance, and
  • How application rationalization supports M&A diligence, board reporting and AI investment capacity.

Cost: Free

When: Friday, March 27, 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Click Here to Register

 

Webinar: Beyond Cost Centers: Finding Margin Opportunity Through Encounter-level Variation, March 25

March 23, 2026

Webinar: Beyond Cost Centers: Finding Margin Opportunity Through Encounter-level Variation, March 25

Hospital margins remain under pressure, yet most organizations still rely on cost center reporting to understand profitability.

The problem is that cost centers rarely reveal where margin is truly gained or lost. Variation often occurs across providers, sites of care, and individual patient encounters – but traditional financial reporting makes it difficult to see.

In this session, we’ll discuss how external Cost & Margin benchmarks for healthcare organizations across the country connect financial, operational, and reimbursement data to reveal profitability at the encounter level.

With this level of insight, finance teams can uncover variation, identify margin opportunity, and better support strategic and operational decisions.

Insights Include:

  • Why cost center reporting often hides meaningful margin variation,
  • How encounter-level cost and reimbursement data reveal true profitability drivers,
  • Where organizations are uncovering margin opportunities across providers and sites of care, and
  • How finance leaders are using these insights to support smarter operational and strategic decisions.

Cost: Free

When: Wednesday, March 25, 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.

Click Here to Register

Webinar: How One System Realigned Its Fragmented EHR and Helped Improve Care Delivery, March 23

March 23, 2026

Webinar: How One System Realigned Its Fragmented EHR and Helped Improve Care Delivery, March 23

Most health care organizations struggle with fragmented systems that make it difficult to share patient information and operate efficiently. Optum Health faced this challenge head-on – transforming dozens of standalone EHR systems into a single enterprise platform. This transformation unified clinical data and streamlined care delivery by standardizing supporting technologies, third-party applications and end-user devices across the network.

Discover actionable strategies to align technology, improve efficiency and enable growth – all while helping enhance the patient and provider experience.

This webinar will cover 4 key lessons:

  • Operational transformation,
  • Care team and staff change management,
  • Seamless data flow, and
  • Technology and workflow alignment.

Cost: Free

When: Wednesday, March 25, 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Click Here to Register