CCMH CEO Named to HAP Board

The Hospital & Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania (HAP) recently named the organization’s 2010 board of directors and officers, effective January 1, 2010 including Edward C. Pitchford, president and chief executive officer, Charles Cole Memorial Hospital, Coudersport.

HAP is a statewide membership services organization that advocates for nearly 250 Pennsylvania acute and specialty care, primary care, subacute care, long-term care, home health, and hospice providers, as well as the patients and communities they serve. Pitchford was elected to a three-year term on the board of directors after serving on the association’s Small and Rural Hospital Council and its Public Policy Committee. He is also a member of the board of directors of the Pennsylvania Rural Health Association.

“I’m honored to have been selected to serve the Hospital & Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania at this time in the history of our industry. We are experiencing the most significant changes in healthcare since the Great Society program of the 1960s which created the Medicare and Medicaid programs and I’m excited to be part of an organization that is influential and helping to lead the way both in Washington D.C. and Harrisburg. Small rural hospitals need a strong advocate and I intend to fulfill that role during my term with HAP,” Pitchford said.

Pitchford was elected to the Pennsylvania Rural Health Association board of directors last June and serves on the Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania Public Policy Committee and Council of Small Hospitals. Over the past year, he was instrumental in working with state legislators to secure $11 million in additional funding for critical access hospitals in Pennsylvania and to introduce widely endorsed legislation to make this funding permanent. He testified before the Pennsylvania Public Health and Welfare Committee and worked with the Senate republican leadership in crafting proposed legislation to enhance access to primary care throughout Pennsylvania. Most recently, the hospital hosted 13 Republican State Representatives for a forum on rural health issues and innovations in rural emergency medicine.

Pitchford’s career in health care spans 30 years, including being associated with Charles Cole periodically since 1979, serving first as the hospital’s independent auditor, its chief financial officer, and currently its president and CEO. He also worked for 14 years as an executive at the Borgess Health Alliance, Kalmazoo, Mich.