If 2006 was the Kaine administration’s “year of transportation,” 2007 could be shaping up as the “year of health care.” Last week, Gov. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine announced appointments to the Commission on Health Reform. The commission has two top priorities: (1) providing insurance coverage to the more than one million Virginians who lack it, and (2) addressing the growing shortages of health professionals across all disciplines.
According to the Governor’s press release: The Commission is tasked with identifying and implementing national best practices at the state level with emphasis on access, quality, and safety of care.
Talk about a blue-ribbon panel! Marilynn Tavenner, the commission chair, knows a thing or two about health care: She was CEO of HCA’s Richmond-area operations. Other senior health care excecutives representing a broad cross spectrum of the industry will serve with her. Kaine also has taken care to seed the commission with Republican lawmakers as well as his fellow Democrats.
There’s one name missing from the list that would give the commission even more credibility in my book: Ramesh Shukla. A professor of health care administration at Virginia Commonwealth University, Shukla is arguably the state’s leading expert on hospital productivity. If the Governor is looking for “win-win” solutions, as Secretary of Technology Aneesh Chopra indicated he was in an interview a half year ago, there’s no greater win-win than boosting the productivity and efficiency of the system.
Health care, which consitutes nearly one-sixth of the state GDP, is so huge, so cumbersome, regulated at so many levels, and so guarded by vested interests, that I don’t have high hopes that the commission will agree upon anything more than window dressing. But we have to try. As with transportation, we cannot long afford Business As Usual.