General Session and Keynote Speakers

SUNDAY, April 6, 2008
3 to 5 pm

WELCOME & OPENING GENERAL SESSION

Paul Begala Strategist & Commentator

The 2006 midterm elections shocked many in the political world. But not Paul Begala. Rep. Rahm Emanuel, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, has said the CNN political analyst and former top aide to President Clinton was the first person to predict the Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives – well over a year before the election.

But Begala did not merely predict the outcome of the election, he affected it. Tom DeLay, the former Republican House Majority Leader, named Begala as one of five architects of the coalition that ousted his party from power. “I have never seen such a powerful coalition,” DeLay said.

As a strategist for Bob Casey, Jr., Begala helped direct Casey’s landslide victory over Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania – the third-ranking Member of the Senate and the highest-ranking Republican to lose in 2006. Santorum had never lost an election in his life, yet Casey defeated him in the biggest landslide any Democrat has ever won in a Pennsylvania Senate race, and the biggest landslide any Senate challenger has achieved in 25 years.

Begala also made more than two dozen appearances on the campaign trail for Democratic House challengers, from New Hampshire to California and from Nevada to Florida.

Begala served as counselor to President Clinton in the White House, where he helped define and defend the Administration’s agenda, from the State of the Union Address to the economic, domestic and international issues the White House faces each day. With his partner James Carville he was a senior strategist for the Clinton-Gore Presidential Campaign in 1992, and he has helped direct the political strategy of numerous other campaigns across the country and around the world, including advising politicians in Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa.

He helped his friend John F. Kennedy, Jr., launch the political magazine George and wrote the “Capitol Hillbilly” column, but left the magazine after John passed away. He has also written for Esquire magazine and The Washington Monthly, and is the author of the New York Times best-selling book Is Our Children Learning? The Case Against George W. Bush. His books, Buck Up, Suck Up, and Come Back When You Foul Up and Take It Back: Our Party, Our Country, Our Future (2006), both written with James Carville, were also New York Times best sellers.

Begala received his BA in Government and his law degree from the University of Texas at Austin, where he was student body president. He is currently a research professor at Georgetown University’s Public Policy Institute.

Val J. Halamandaris, JD NAHC President

Val J. Halamandaris was named President of the National Association for Home Care & Hospice on its birthday, March 10, 1982. For the past 26 years, he has guided the organization to become one of the most respected in Washington, D.C. Under his direction, NAHC has helped raise public awareness and the acceptance of home care and hospice from 10 percent to more than 80 percent.

Halamandaris is a Utah native and worked his way through college on the staff of Sen. Frank E. Moss, and continued working full time as he completed his law degree from Catholic University Law School. He served as Counsel to the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging and the U.S. House Select Committee on Aging. In a congressional career that spanned 20 years, he helped to write major home health, hospice and aging bills into law.

In addition to being a trade association executive, he is an attorney, author, publisher, editor, producer of films for television, a published photographer and a humanitarian.

Since coming to NAHC, Halamandaris has founded The Caring Institute, The Frederick Douglass Museum, The Foundation for Hospice and Home Care, The Center for Health Care Law, CARING Magazine and The World Home Care and Hospice Organization. Most recently, he helped found the Home Care Technology Association of America, the Private Duty Homecare Association of America and the Home Care and Hospice Financial Managers Association.

Halamandaris has won many awards, including the National Ellis Island Award in 2003, and has been one of the nation’s most acknowledged experts on the U.S. Congress and in the fields of health care and aging for more than 40 years.

. :  Washington Update  : . NAHC policy staff engaged in negotiations with Congress, federal agencies and other policymaking bodies will provide inside information on issues of vital interest to home care and hospice providers. William A. Dombi, Esq. Vice President for Law Theresa M. Forster Vice President for Policy Jeff Kincheloe, JD Director, Government Affairs, U.S. Senate Janet E. Neigh Vice President for Hospice Program Mary St. Pierre, MGA, BSN, RN Vice President, Regulatory Affairs Yvonne Santa Anna, RN, MSG Director, Government Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives

Washington Update
National Association for Home Care & Hospice policy staff engaged in negotiations with Congress, federal agencies and other policymaking bodies will provide inside information on issues of vital interest to home care and hospice providers. Your representatives on the front lines will present the latest on legislative, regulatory, legal and research developments relative to the prospective payment system, conditions of participation, quality monitoring and other vital issues.

Objectives:

1. Identify pending regulatory issues and analyze their impact on home care and hospice agencies.
2. Benchmark individual agencies against national data.
3. Analyze pending legislative proposals for impact on home care and hospice operations.

Faculty: Legal, Legislative, and Regulatory Staff, National Association for Home Care & Hospice, Washington, D.C.

Course Level: Intermediate; 2.0 Nursing CEs; 2.0 Accounting CPEs (NASBA/SKA)

MONDAY, April 7, 2008
8:30 to 10am

GENERAL SESSION

Chris Matthews Television Host

Chris Matthews hosts Hardball with Chris Matthews Monday through Friday on MSNBC. Matthews is also the host of The Chris Matthews Show, a syndicated weekly news program produced by NBC News and distributed by NBC Universal Television Distribution. Mr. Matthews is a regular commentator on NBC’s Today show.

A television news anchor with remarkable depth of experience, Matthews has distinguished himself as a broadcast journalist, newspaper bureau chief, presidential speechwriter, and best-selling author. Matthews covered the fall of the Berlin Wall, the first all-races election in South Africa and the Good Friday Peace Talks in Northern Ireland. In 1997 and 1998, his digging in the National Archives produced a series of San Francisco Examiner scoops on the Nixon presidential tapes. Matthews has covered American presidential election campaigns since 1988, including the five-week recount of 2000. In 2005, Matthews covered the funeral of Pope John Paul II.

In March 2004, he received the David Brinkley Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism. Matthews has also been awarded The Abraham Lincoln Award from the Union League of Philadelphia and in 2005 he received the Gold Medal Award from the Pennsylvania Society.

Matthews worked for 15 years as a print journalist, 13 of them as Washington Bureau Chief for The San Francisco Examiner (1987 - 2000), and two years as a national columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle, which was syndicated to 200 newspapers by United Media.

Prior to that, Matthews spent 15 years in politics and government, working in the White House for four years under President Jimmy Carter as a Presidential speechwriter and on the President’s Reorganization Project, in the U.S. Senate for five years on the staffs of Sen. Frank Moss (Utah) and Sen. Edmund Muskie (Maine), and as the top aide to Speaker of the House Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, Jr. for six years.

Matthews is the author of four best-selling books, including New York Times best seller, American: Beyond Our Grandest Notions (2002). His first book, Hardball (1988), is required reading in many college-level political science courses. Kennedy & Nixon (1996) was named by The Readers Digest “Today’s Best Non-fiction” and served as the basis of a documentary on the History Channel. Now, Let Me Tell What I Really Think (2001) was another New York Times bestseller. His latest book, Life’s a Campaign, was released in 2007.

A graduate of Holy Cross College, Matthews did graduate work in economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Matthews also worked for two years as a trade development advisor with the U.S. Peace Corps in the southern African nation of Swaziland.
Matthews was a visiting fellow at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, Institute of Politics. He holds 16 honorary Ph.Ds.

He is married to Kathleen Matthews. They have three children, Michael, Thomas and Caroline.

Elaine D. Stephens NAHC Chairman

Elaine D. Stephens, RN, MPH, FHHC, is the chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Association for Home Care & Hospice (NAHC) and is President and CEO of Visiting Nurse Service of Greater Rhode Island and Hospice Care of the Visiting Nurse Service of Greater Rhode Island.

Stephens graduated Magna Cum Laude from Boston College where she received a bachelor’s degree in Nursing. She also received a master’s degree in Public Health from the Boston University School of Medicine.

During her tenure as President and CEO, Visiting Nurse Service of Greater Rhode Island and Hospice Care of the Visiting Nurse Service of Greater Rhode Island has seen a 900 percent growth in the number of patients served. Stephens and her staff have developed new models of care for the future, including outcome management programs, disease management programs, telehealth, private duty and long term care management.

She has received numerous awards and her work has been published in numerous professional publications, including the Remington Report and Home Care Marketer. She has served widely as an instructor at professional conferences. Stephens maintains involvement in various community activities. She was on the founding boards of the Rhode Island Partnership for Home Care and Rhode Island Visiting Nurse Network. She has served the Home Care Alliance of Massachusetts and on the Board of Directors of the Visiting Nurse Association of New England.

Stephens served on the Board of Directors of NAHC for five terms prior to her becoming Chairman in January 2007: two terms as Secretary, two terms as Regional Director and one term as Director for Non-Profit Section.

WEDNESDAY, April 9, 2008
Noon to 1:30pm

CLOSING GENERAL SESSION

Gloria Borger Political Columnist and Commentator

Gloria Borger is the political columnist for U.S. News and World Report, penning the biweekly “On Politics” column and serves as a regular panelist on PBS’ Washington Week. Previously, she was the National Political Correspondent for CBS News. Before accepting the co-anchor job on CNBC’s Capital Report, with Alan Murray, the former Washington bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal, Borger was a special correspondent with CBS News and appeared weekly as a panelist on CBS’ Face the Nation.

She started her magazine career as a newsmagazine analyst at the Washington bureau of Newsweek, where she began as a general assignment reporter covering a variety of stories ranging from the Three-Mile Island nuclear accident to presidential campaigns. Politics soon became her beat, and she was named Newsweek’s chief congressional correspondent, the title she held before moving to U.S. News and World Report.

Borger first entered journalism as a reporter at the now-defunct Washington Star where she won a series of Front Page awards. While there, she also co-authored “Federal Triangle,” a spoof about political life in Washington.

She is a 1974 graduate of Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, where she has served on the board of trustees. She was also the recipient of an IBM-sponsored Watson Traveling Fellowship to study the British press. Borger lives in Washington, D.C. with her husband Lance Morgan and their two sons.