(Archived from September 25, 2021) Session 2 – Saturday, September 25th; 10am – 12pm CST
Protecting Tennessee’s Rural Hospitals
Rural Hospital Closures in Tennessee – Richard Henighan
Richard Henighan
How Many Rural Hospitals Might Convert to a Rural Emergency Hospital?
George Pink, PhD
Rural Hospitals and Medicaid Expansion
Adam Searing, JD, MPH
Moderated by:
Barbara Clinton, MSW
THCC Board and Rural Health Committee Member
Rural Hospital Model – Rural Emergency Hospital
George Pink, PhD
Deputy Director of the NC Rural Health Research Program
Medicaid and Rural Health
Adam Searing, JD, MPH
Associate Professor at the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy’s Center for Children and Families
Learn more about our speakers:
George H. Pink, Ph.D., is the Humana Distinguished Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management, Senior Research Fellow at the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research, and Deputy Director of the NC Rural Health Research Program, all at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Dr. Pink teaches courses in healthcare finance and is involved in several research projects, including the Rapid Response to Requests for Rural Data Analysis and Issue-specific Rural Research Studies, Rural Health Research Grant Program and the Rural Hospital Flexibility Program Evaluation, all funded by the federal Office of Rural Health Policy.
Prior to receiving a PhD in corporate finance, he spent ten years in health services management, planning, and consulting. In the past 30 years, he has served on over 100 boards and committees of hospitals and other healthcare organizations. He has written more than 80 peer-reviewed articles and has made more than 250 presentations in ten countries. He is a member of the Board of Piedmont Health Service, a large community health center that provides primary health care to residents of five largely rural counties in North Carolina.
Adam Searing is an Associate Professor of the Practice at the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy’s Center for Children and Families where he focuses on Medicaid and other health coverage programs.
Before joining CCF, Mr. Searing served seventeen years as Director of the Health Access Coalition for the North Carolina Justice Center. The Health Access Coalition is North Carolina’s leading voice for health reforms that address the needs of the uninsured and underinsured. During his tenure, Searing fought to keep health plans and hospitals nonprofit and community-focused, won and helped implement expansions of the state Medicaid program, helped pass a model state’s Children’s Health Insurance Program and worked on passage and implementation of the federal Affordable Care Act. In addition, Mr. Searing taught public policy courses as adjunct faculty at both the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health and the Duke University Sanford School of Public Policy.
In 2012 he was named a Health Advocate of the Year by the national consumer group Families USA. Also in 2012 he was recognized as a “Champion of Change” in health care by the White House. He is a recipient of both the NC Pediatric Society’s Tom Vitaglione Child Health Advocacy Award and the NC Primary Health Care Association’s Evelyn D. Schmidt Award for Outstanding Service. Searing is a licensed attorney with degrees in both law and public health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Barbara Clinton, MSW is a public health consultant who served as director of the Vanderbilt University Center for Community Health Solutions and a faculty member of the Vanderbilt Schools of Medicine and Nursing and Meharry Medical College for more than 20 years. Clinton directed Tennessee’s SBIRT Champions program, recruiting and training urban and rural physicians to incorporate substance abuse surveillance and management into their work with patients. She has served as an advisor to former Vice President Al Gore, the Tennessee Commission on Aging, the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University and several private foundations.
Clinton teaches yoga and assists Nashville Public Library in evaluating after school programs in low income neighborhoods. Clinton also serves on the board of the Tennessee Health Care Campaign, JFON (Justice For Our Neighbors), a non-profit law firm which offers free legal services to immigrants and refugees, and the Tennessee Collaborative for Community Health Workers.