Health care is changing almost before our eyes, and the headlines just scratch the surface.
Do you need help sorting through data on the quality of your doctor or hospital or figuring out what your care will cost? "Health Cents" will point you toward answers, while also offering insights on government health policy and political debates.
Health Cents is written by:
Robert I. Field, Ph.D., J.D., M.P.H, is professor of law at the Kline School of Law and professor of health management and policy at the Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University. Robert is the author of Mother of Invention: How the Government Created 'Free-Market' Health Care, which explores the government programs that created our health care system, and of Health Care Regulation in America: Complexity, Confrontation and Compromise, a comprehensive overview of the government's oversight of health care, both published by Oxford University Press.
Jeffrey C. Brenner, MD is the Founder and Executive Director of the Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers, and a recipient of a 2013 MacArthur Foundation genius award. He is a family physician and has practiced in Camden for eleven years as a front-line primary care provider for patients of all ages. Having owned a private practice in Camden, he has experience in implementing electronic health records and running a paperless office, open-access scheduling, as well as first-hand knowledge of the various challenges facing primary care in the current health system.
Dr. Brenner currently serves full-time as the Coalition's Executive Director, where he spends much of this time meeting with stakeholders and policymakers, advocating for the models of care the Coalition has developed and demonstrated through data centric results. He is also the medical director of the Urban Health Institute at Cooper University Healthcare and on the faculty of the Cooper Medical School at Rowan University. He is a graduate of Vassar College and the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.
Andy Carter: After a 20-year career in government, business, consulting, and advocacy, Andy entered the association world in 2001 as the president of the Ohio Children's Hospital Association, representing six of the nation's top regional children's hospitals. Andy then served for nearly six years as the president and CEO of the Visiting Nurse Associations of America (VNAA), the official national association for nonprofit, community-based home health and hospice agencies who care for approximately 4 million patients each year.
He assumed the role of HAP's president and CEO in December, 2012. In this role, he represents more than 240 acute and specialty care hospitals and health systems across the state providing care for 12.7 million Pennsylvanians. He works with a 25-member board of directors and a team of 75 staff to lead the advocacy, policy planning, communications, and member service initiatives of one of the nation's largest statewide health care advocacy organizations.
He is an honors graduate of Georgetown University and holds a Master of Public Policy degree from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is married with two adult children and lives in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Robert B. Doherty is Senior Vice President of Governmental Affairs and Public Policy for the American College of Physicians (ACP), the largest physician specialty society and second largest medical organization in the United States. ACP represents 137,000 internal medicine physicians and medical students. Mr. Doherty has more than 33 years of health policy experience and is an accomplished presenter at health conferences. From 1979 to 1998, Mr. Doherty worked in the governmental affairs department of the American Society of Internal Medicine, and with the merger of ASIM and ACP in June, 1998, joined the ACP as Senior Vice President for Governmental Affairs and Public Policy. He has senior staff management responsibilities for ACP's departments of legislative affairs, public policy, regulatory affairs, and public affairs.
Mr. Doherty has authored several papers for the Annals of Internal Medicine, ACP's flagship peer-reviewed journal: The Road to Health Reform: What Can Physicians Expect Over the Next 4 Years? 23 January 2013, The Supreme Court and the Affordable Care Act: Milestone or Detour on the Road to Universal Coverage? 16 October 2012, Universal Health Coverage in the United States: Is it Slip Slidin' Away? published on 18 January 2011, The Certitudes and Uncertainties of Health Care Reform, published 8 April 2010, and Assessing the New Medicare Prescription Drug Law published 9 September 2004. Mr. Doherty is a co-author of the ACP position paper, Achieving a High Performance Health Care System with Universal Access: What the United States Can Learn from Other Countries, published by Annals on 1 January 2008.
David Grande is an Assistant Professor of Medicine, a Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, and an Associate Program Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Grande's research and work focuses on medical professionalism with an emphasis on conflicts of interest and health care for vulnerable populations. He is a founding board member of Healthy Philadelphia, an organization chartered by the City of Philadelphia focused on improving the quality of care in the health care safety net. He chaired Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter's health transition team and is a member of the Advisory Committee on Public Health Law for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Grande attended medical school at the Ohio State University College of Medicine. He trained in internal medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Following his clinical training, he completed a Masters in Public Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University and was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania.
Tine Hansen-Turton is currently the Chief Strategy Officer of Public Health Management Corporation, one of the largest nonprofit organizations in Pennsylvania, where she oversees and leads corporate strategy, development and operations for a nationally-leading public health institute and its public health foundation, generating annual revenues in excess of $200 million. She also serves as the founding Executive Director for the Convenient Care Association (CCA), the national trade association of over 1500 private-sector retail clinics, serving 20 million people with basic health care services across the country. Additionally, Tine Hansen-Turton serves as CEO of the National Nursing Centers Consortium (NNCC), a non-profit organization supporting the growth and development of over 500 nurse-managed health clinics, serving more than 2.5 million vulnerable people across the country in urban and rural locations.
Drew Harris, DPM, MPH is Program Director for the Master of Science in Health Policy at the Jefferson College of Population Health. He is the founding chair of the New Jersey Public Health Institute and currently serves on the Executive Board of the American Public Health Association. He is also a former radio talk show host for HouseCalls, a program focusing on health care and public health.
Antoinette Kraus is currently the director of the Pennsylvania Health Access Network. Kraus has helped grow the Pennsylvania Health Access Network into the state's largest statewide health coalition and has established PHAN as a leader in providing education on health care reform and the implementation process in Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Health Access Network currently has over 60 participating organizations representing over one million Pennsylvanian's from the faith, labor, small business, disability and nonprofit community.
Laval Miller-Wilson is the Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Health Law Project, a non-profit law firm that protects and advances the health rights of low-income and underserved individuals. PHLP advocates for policies and practices that : 1) maximize health coverage and access to care, 2) hold insurers and providers accountable to consumers, and 3) achieve better outcomes and reduce health disparities.
Prior to joining PHLP, Miller-Wilson was a Senior Attorney at the Juvenile Law Center. He joined JLC in 1995 as a Skadden Foundation Fellow and focused on the delivery of education services for at-risk youth. His earliest cases were representing youth with developmental disabilities, such as autism and mental retardation, who were accused of crimes for disability related behavior. In 2003, Miller-Wilson conducted an assessment of indigent juvenile defense throughout Pennsylvania that led the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to order rules changes resulting in increased funding and support for attorneys representing juveniles in the Commonwealth's 67 counties. Miller-Wilson was lead counsel in JLC's 2008 petition to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to ensure accused youth in Luzerne County had the right to counsel.
Miller-Wilson graduated from Harvard College and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has been a lecturer at Temple University and the University of Pennsylvania schools of law.
David B. Nash, MD, MBA is the Founding Dean of the Jefferson College of Population Health where he is the Dr. Raymond C. and Doris N. Grandon Professor of Health Policy. He is a board certified internist and is internationally recognized for his work in outcomes management, medical staff development and quality-of-care. He has authored more than 100 articles in major journals, edited 22 books, and is editor-in-chief of four major national journals.
Mark V. Pauly Ph.D. is Bendheim Professor in the Department of Health Care Management, Professor of Health Care Management, and Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at The Wharton School, and Professor of Economics in the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. He co-founded the Roy and Diana Vagelos Life Sciences and Management Program at the University of Pennsylvania in 2005, and has served as Faculty Co-Director since its inception. Dr. Pauly received the Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Virginia.
One of the nation's leading health economists, he has made significant contributions to the fields of medical economics and health insurance. His classic study on the economics of moral hazard was the first to point out how health insurance coverage may affect patients' use of medical services. A former commissioner on the Physician Payment Review Commission, Dr. Pauly has served on the advisory committee to the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality and the Medicare Technical Advisory Panel. He recently served on the National Advisory Council for the National Institutes of Health National Center for Research Resources, and is the newly elected President of the American Society of Health Economists. He is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Health Care Finance and Economics, an associate editor of the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, and Co-Editor of the Handbook of Health Economics, Volume 2 (published in 2012 by Elsevier).
Dr. Pauly was awarded the William B. Graham Prize for Health Services Research from the Baxter International Foundation and the Association of University Programs in Health Administration in 2012. He is also the 2011-2012 recipient of the University of Pennsylvania Provost's Award for Distinguished Ph.D. Teaching and Mentoring, and the 2012 recipient of the Victor R. Fuchs Lifetime Achievement Award from ASHEcon.
Howard J. Peterson, MHA, is the Founder and Managing Partner of TRG Healthcare, and brings significant experience and foresight to each engagement. He has more than 30 years of experience leading complex healthcare transactions, developing progressive strategic, financial and operational solutions for a broad range of healthcare clients. His consulting expertise includes: strategic transactions , strategic and financial positioning, operational and financial performance improvement. He has worked extensively with academic medical centers, teaching hospitals, hospital systems, and faculty/physician groups.
Prior to forming TRG Healthcare, Mr. Peterson served as President of Founders Healthcare, Inc., a for-profit physician organization in Philadelphia. He also served for 15 years as a hospital executive, including seven years as CEO of Penn State University Hospital / Hershey Medical Center and eight years in various executive positions including COO of the University of Michigan Medical Center.
Mr. Peterson's educational background includes a Master of Hospital and Health Care Administration and a Bachelor of Science degree in business, public health and sociology from the University of Minnesota.
Paula L. Stillman, MD, currently working as a healthcare consultant with special expertise in population health and disease management. Dr. Stillman was previously the Vice President of Health Services and Director of Institute for Population Health at Temple University Health System. Dr. Stillman also served previously as Senior Vice President for Special Projects at Christiana Care Health System in Newark, DE, and as Senior Vice President of Quality and Care Management at Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health System. Throughout her career in academic medicine, Dr. Stillman has held a number of faculty appointments and administrative positions including Dean and Provost at Eastern Virginia Medical School and Curriculum Dean at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center.
After earning a medical degree from New York University School of Medicine, Dr. Stillman completed residency training in pediatrics at Boston City Hospital and the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Tucson. She earned an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She has a black belt in lean six sigma. She is a master of the American College of Physician. She has received international recognition for her contributions to medical education, performance assessment, and the use of standardized patients.
Elizabeth A.W. Williams is senior vice president and chief communications officer for Independence Blue Cross,which serves 7 million people in 24 states and the District of Columbia. She oversees communications and brand strategy, advertising, media, public relations, communications planning, creative services, sponsorships and events.
Before joining IBC in 2005, Williams was principal of EW Communications, a communications strategy consulting firm whose clients included The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and The Pew Charitable Trusts. Previously, she served as the director of administration at The Pew Charitable Trusts, managing a portfolio of the Trusts' grants and overseeing HR, IT, and Knowledge Management. Williams began her career as a reporter and editor. She spent 18 years at The Philadelphia Inquirer. In 1992, she became vice president of marketing for Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc., which published the Inquirer and the Daily News. Williams serves on the Strategic Communications Advisory Group for the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association,the board of the Arts & Business Council of Greater Philadelphia, and the Marketing Committee of the United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania.
Williams earned a B.A. in political science from Smith College and an M.A. in journalism from the Medill School at Northwestern.