Dear Colleague:
 It is a pleasure to invite you to attend the 24th Annual Meeting of the National Association for Home Care and Hospice to be held in beautiful Seattle, Washington on October 23-26, 2005.
The theme of this meeting is: Claiming the Future of Health Care. We believe that it is our time to lead. We need to assert that home care and hospice are the heart and soul of health care in America and not an ancillary service.
Leadership involves taking responsibility and setting the course for the future. All of us in home care and hospice are only too happy to accept the responsibility; we have good ideas about the flaws in the current health care system and how to fix them. These are the issues we will explore in the Emerald City.
There is something exciting about Seattle. Seattle and Washington state in general have a reputation for innovation and excellence. Trends that start here have a way of sweeping through the country. We have only to look to Starbucks, Costco, Nordstrom, and Microsoft to name just a few of the successful enterprises that were born here. Our goal is to learn from the leaders of these companies and follow their footsteps to success.
In that respect, our mission in Seattle is to learn the essential elements of what makes a company successful. We hope to learn how to implement superlative customer service and build employee satisfaction. We are committed to learning how to best integrate new technology in ways that both lower cost and increase the quality of care. Another important goal is to learn from ourselves as well as from other industries. We have been searching from one end of America to another to find the best practices that can be implemented by home care agencies and hospices and are now ready to put our knowledge to use.
We hope to increase the number of home care agencies and hospices that are under consideration for a Malcolm Baldridge Award. We also hope to add a few agencies to the Fortune List of Best Places to Work. We are also trying to identify and reward the best home care aides and nurses and allow them to make this a more positive and efficient industry.
America has been looking long and hard for a way to provide health care to more people in a manner which actually reduces, not increases, costs. The nation has been looking for a more personal, flexible and efficient form of health care delivery. The US has also been looking for the best possible way to care for the millions of people who will need long term home care, to help them remain independent in their own homes instead of being placed in an institutional setting.
Thanks in large part to the National Governors Association, home care has been propelled forward as the answer to the long term care question. We want to make sure that our early efforts inspire confidence in this proposal. The best way to ensure that this happens is to take to heart a lesson of the famous Pike Place Fish Market. They say, "It all comes down to doing things right, to treating others as you would like to be treated, to building teamwork, and having fun together." Let us join together at this year's annual meeting in order to be ready when the curtain is raised. We will be entrusted to the management of health care in America and I know we will be more than equal to the task. See you in Seattle on October 23-26, 2005.
Sincerely,
Val J. Halamandaris, President
National Association for Home Care & Hospice
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