The Health Forum and the American Hospital Association's 2009 Leadership Summit will be attended by some 1,200 senior health care executives. The conference focuses on the most promising advances in health care quality, safety and performance improvement with particular emphasis on the leader's role and responsibilities.

The Summit will highlight the most creative thinking and strategic approaches for positioning organizations for a sustainable and successful future. Rich Umbdenstock, President & CEO of the American Hospital Association and Neil J. Jesuele, President of the Health Forum, recognize that this is proving to be a difficult year for everyone, so they are committed to ensuring that your Summit experience is worth the investment you make to be there. They will strive to introduce the most effective strategies, ideas and innovations that will help you add new levels of performance excellence to your organization - something all the more important in today's turbulent environment.

The program features industry leaders and practitioners addressing the critical issues of reform of the payment system, organizational strategy and methodologies for achieving the IOM's Six Aims, emerging physician-hospital relations and redesigned care delivery models and the impact of new technologies on patient care and business practices.

The conference will also look at the leadership commitment needed to improve quality and safety, and explore new opportunities for engaging the workforce in needed to improve quality and safety, and explore new opportunities for engaging the workforce in creating cultures that attract and retain critical personnel and result in a better patient experience.

Featured speakers will include Robert B. Reich, Professor of Public Policy, University of California at Berkeley and form U.S. Secretary of Labor, Tom Peters, Business iconoclast, change agent and author of multiple best-sellers including Re-Imagine! And In Search of Excellence, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Historian and author of Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD, Former Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institutes of Health and Larry Keeley, Thought leader, co-founder and president of Innovation and strategy consulting firm, Doblin, Inc.