Newswise — A panel of top health care experts agreed that while health care reform is likely to happen this year, its implementation will be incremental. They also stated that strong leadership in academic health centers is needed to help drive that change and to ensure it is the kind of change that is needed to solve the health care crisis in their communities. They shared their views at a forum attended by nearly 200 health care professionals at the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital. Their meeting was the first of a series of events planned in conjunction with the investiture of William F. Owen, Jr., MD, as fourth president of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.
Heather Howard, Commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services (NJDHSSS), cited the need for more focus on public health in discussions of health care reform, but expressed confidence that now is the time for the country to move forward on this issue. "The stars are aligned to get health care reform accomplished this year," she said.
Commissioner Howard was joined on the panel by Alfred F. Tallia, founding director of the Health Policy Fellowship and chair of Strategic Planning for UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School; Joel Cantor, Sc.D., Director of the Center for State Health Policy at Rutgers University; Steven A. Wartman, President of the Association of Academic Health Centers, and Eliot Fishman, Director of the Office of Policy at NJDHSS. Denise V. Rodgers, MD, UMDNJ Provost and Executive Vice President, served as moderator.
"It's important for the academic health centers to engage the community, but communities may not be ready to embrace the academic health centers," Tallia said. "A lot of relationship building is needed and now is the perfect time to begin."
The panelists agreed that a significant challenge to health care reform is a "silo mentality" that now exists, where various players in the health care system are accustomed to working separately rather than collaborating with one another. True health care reform goes beyond deciding how to allocate resources or who gets to make decisions on how health care dollars are spent. Reform will ultimately be a byproduct of an essential change in the way health and medical services are delivered.
"The task of integration and alignment of services is the greatest task of academic health center leadership," Wartman said.
Dr. Owen applauded the provocative discussion and the insight of the panelists. In closing, he reminded those attending that, as the country thinks about health care reform, it may be necessary to overturn some conventional approaches.
"People often refer to lists that give us the 'top10' causes of death in our country," he said. "But maybe it's time we started looking at the 10 leading causes of life."
Reporters who wish to receive a complete transcript of today's discussion can contact either Jeff Tolvin at [email protected] or Jerry Carey at [email protected].
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UMDNJ is the nation's largest free-standing public health sciences university with more than 5,700 students attending the state's three medical schools, its only dental school, a graduate school of biomedical sciences, a school of health related professions, a school of nursing and its only school of public health, on five campuses. Last year, there were more than two million patient visits to UMDNJ facilities and faculty at campuses in Newark, New Brunswick/Piscataway, Scotch Plains, Camden and Stratford. UMDNJ operates University Hospital, a Level I Trauma Center in Newark, and University Behavioral Health care, a mental health and addiction services network.
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