As stated above, the Network's adopted mission is to improve the clinical, operational, and financial performance of Alaska 's small rural hospitals to ensure patient access to appropriate healthcare services. The principles identified to assist in achieving this mission include collaboration, a customer/patient focus, continuous quality improvement, financial and operational improvement, staff satisfaction, and self-sustaining .

As the mission and principles suggest, there are three major goals of Alaska 's networking efforts.

The first is an increase in the quality and consistency of the health care provided by Network members to their communities and individual patients. Primary objectives of this goal include collaborative efforts to benefit quality through improved communications, benchmarking, staff education and training, workforce development, and shared services (where feasible).

The second major goal is to improve the financial performance and stability of these small hospitals through the exploration of group purchasing efforts and other financial cooperatives that can maximize the limited dollars available through economies of scale not otherwise possible to the member hospitals individually.

The third major goal is to increase assess to appropriate healthcare services by, over time, working to partner with the many and varied providers of health care that exist in this State and in most of its larger rural communities.

The simple reason for this focus by Alaska 's rural hospital Network: the provision of quality health care by viable providers, together with access to appropriate healthcare, will clearly reduce health disparities and improve the health of the Alaskans in their regions.