Georgia Alliance of
Community Hospitals (GACH)

For the past 10 years, Hayslett Group has worked with the Georgia Alliance of Community Hospitals, an association of more than 75 not-for-profit hospitals, helping the organization communicate with the media, legislators and other key constituencies.

We have supported the Alliance in communicating with these stakeholders on a range of health policy issues, including Medicaid funding and the state's Certificate of Need system, among others. We managed the Alliance's involvement in promoting the state's effort several years ago to have financially ailing rural hospitals designated by the federal government as Critical Access Hospitals, which resulted in their receiving higher Medicaid reimbursement rates. We also designed and managed the introduction of then-Governor Zell Miller's widely acclaimed Beethoven for Babies program. Our ongoing work for the Alliance has entailed organizing countless briefings for legislators on various health policy issues.

In addition, each year of our service, we have organized and planned their annual meetings, written their white papers and managed a media relations strategy focused on putting GACH members in front of the right eyes.

Hayslett Group produced speeches, op-ed and publications for GACH, which have won awards from IABC, PRSA and LACP. Most recently, the Alliance's first-ever annual report on community healthcare in Georgia was recognized by the LACP as one of the best non-profit annual reports produced nationally in 2005.

Above: The GACH 2006 Year in Review "An Army of Angels," An Op-Ed from Modern Healthcare by GACH president Monty Veazey and spreads from the award-winning 2005 GACH annual report.