General Session and Keynote Speakers

SUNDAY, March 22, 2009
3 to 5 pm
Opening General Session & Washington Update

Welcome: Val J. Halamandaris, JD, NAHC President

Opening Keynote: Mark Shields, Political Pundit

Mark Shields Syndicated Columnist and Political Analyst, PBS’ The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

Mark Shields is a nationally known columnist and commentator with unmatched credentials as an analyst of the U.S. political system. He is best known for his work as moderator on CNN’s Capital Gang where he debated policy issues with Robert Novak, Al Hunt, Kate O’Beirne, and Margaret Carlson.

Since 1979, Mark Shields has been writing his column on national politics for The Washington Post. The column is now distributed nationally.

From 1993 to the Fall of 2001, the analysis team of Mark Shields and Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot has been on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS, seen every Friday and during primaries, national conventions and elections. Shields now shares that feature with David Brooks, senior editor of The Weekly Standard.

Shields is also an author, whose book about the 1984 presidential campaign, On the Campaign Trail, has been praised as “funny,” “irreverent,” and “insightful” and for bringing that “race to a magnificent light.”

Before entering journalism, Shields helped manage political campaigns from the courthouse to the White House, in some 38 states. In addition, he has taught American politics and the press at Harvard University and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Shields received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Notre Dame and an honorable discharge from the United States Marine Corps. He is married to Anne Shields and has lived in Washington, D.C. since 1964.

Val J. Halamandaris, JD President, National Association for Home Care & Hospice

Val J. Halamandaris was named President of the National Association for Home Care & Hospice on its birthday, March 10, 1982. For the past 27 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.

Comprehensive Communications Campaign for Home Care & Hospice

The National Association for Home Care & Hospice and the Forum of State Associations have collaborated to initiate a multi-year, comprehensive Home Care & Hospice communications Campaign that will be unveiled as part of the Opening General Session at the 2009 March on Washington.

Faculty: Val J. Halamandaris, NAHC President; Tim Rogers, Chair, Forum of State Associations; Tim Reeves, CEO, and Karen Walsh, Vice President and Director of Public Affairs, The Neiman Group, Harrisburg, Penn.

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:

• Identify pending regulatory issues and analyze their impact on home care and hospice agencies.
• Benchmark individual agencies against national data.
• 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: Update; 1.0 Nursing CEs; 1.0 Accounting CPEs (NASBA/RE).

MONDAY, March 23, 2009
8:30 to 9:45 am
General Session with Keynote Speaker

David Gregory Moderator of "Meet the Press" and NBC News Chief White House Correspondent

As moderator of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” and NBC News Chief White House Correspondent David Gregory led the network’s coverage of the Bush presidency, reporting regularly on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, Today, for NBC News’ 24-hour cable network MSNBC and on MSNBC.com. He is the host of Race for the White House. In addition, Gregory often appears on Hardball with Chris Matthews.

In the fall of 2005, Gregory began substituting regularly for Matt Lauer on Today. He has served as substitute moderator on Meet the Press, and has been a substitute anchor for the weekend editions of Nightly News and Today. As a political commentator, Gregory is a frequent contributor on NBC’s Meet the Press and the syndicated Chris Matthews Show.

He has circled the globe, traveling with President Bush on every major foreign trip and to nearly every state in the nation during the presidential campaigns of 2000 and 2004. From the White House, Gregory has also covered every aspect of the war on terror and the war in Iraq since 9/11. He was the only network correspondent to tour ground zero with President Bush, and he reported exclusively from Afghanistan while traveling with Vice President Dick Cheney to the inauguration of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Gregory was one of the few journalists to travel with Vice President Cheney on a mission to 12 countries in the Middle East in 2002, as the Administration laid the groundwork for the Iraq war.

During the summer of 2004, he landed an exclusive and rare interview in Jerusalem with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ahead of his summit with President Bush in Texas. Through terror attacks, two wars, presidential campaigns, policy debates, Supreme Court nominations and a historic leak investigation, Gregory has earned a reputation for being one of the toughest questioners covering the White House. Naming him one of Washington’s 50 Best and Most Influential Journalists, Washingtonian magazine labeled Gregory the “firebrand in the front row.”

In 2005, Gregory shared an Emmy with his colleagues for the network’s coverage of President Ronald Reagan’s death and funeral the previous summer. He reported on Reagan’s death from Paris, where President Bush learned of the news.

Since joining NBC News in 1995, Gregory has covered nearly every major story that has taken place since. Previously, he worked as an NBC News correspondent based in Los Angeles and Chicago, and in 1998, he anchored for NBC’s cable network MSNBC. Gregory began his journalism career at age 18 as a summer reporter for KGUN-TV in Tucson, Arizona. He also worked for NBC’s flagship West Coast affiliate KCRA-TV in Sacramento.

A native of Los Angeles, Gregory graduated from The American University in Washington, D.C., with a bachelor’s degree in International Studies. In 2005, he was named the School of International Service’s alumnus of the year and now sits on the Dean’s advisory council. Gregory lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife Beth Wilkinson and their three children.

WEDNESDAY, March 25, 2009
Noon to 1:15 pm
Luncheon & Keynote Address

Susan Dentzer Health Affairs Editor-in-Chief and Health Policy Analyst, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

Susan Dentzer is the Editor-in-Chief of Health Affairs, the nation’s leading journal of health policy, and an on-air analyst on health with The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).

Dentzer assumed the job of Editor-in-Chief after a decade as the on-air health correspondent for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS. There she led a unit dedicated to providing in-depth coverage of health care and health policy and Social Security. The unit, begun in 1998, is funded by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

At The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Dentzer has been the recipient of multiple awards. In 2007, she received the American Society on Aging National Media Award for a two-part series on our current understanding of the causes of Alzheimer’s disease, efforts under way to speed treatments to patients, and the enormous burden faced by caregivers of Alzheimer’s patients.

In 2005, Dentzer played a key role in an official White House Mini-Conference on Aging forum on long-term care sponsored by NAHC.

Prior to joining The NewsHour in 1998, Dentzer was chief economics correspondent and economics columnist for U.S. News & World Report, where she served from 1987 to 1997. In a series of columns and stories for U.S. News, she reported extensively on the debate over reforming and partially “privatizing” Social Security and over such health policy issues as regulation of managed care. Before joining U.S. News, Dentzer was at Newsweek, where she was a senior writer covering business news. Dentzer’s work in television has included appearances as a regular analyst or commentator on CNN and The McLaughlin Group.

Dentzer is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She also serves on the Board of Directors of the International Rescue Committee. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Global Health Council, the world’s largest membership organization of groups involved in global health. She serves on the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, as well as the advisory board of the California Health Benefits Review Committee, and is a member of the National Advisory Committee for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Investigator Awards in Health Policy Research. A graduate of Dartmouth College, Dentzer holds an honorary Master of Arts degree from Dartmouth College and an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Muskingum College, New Concord, Ohio.

Dentzer, her husband and three children live in the Washington D.C. area.