Barney Speight (Oregon Health Authority) and Dean Mark Richardson were the keynote speakers at the OHSU Annual Professional Board Staff meeting June 28. Dr Fields receives award

Mr. Speight provided an overview of Oregon's ongoing health care reform efforts, including "taking apart" the Oregon Department of Human Services so that health aspects of the agency are in a single new agency. He also discussed the new all-payers, all-claims database which will support "Dartmouth Atlas style analyses of our Medicare, Medicaid and commercial payer spending across all Oregon communities." He concluded by thanking OHSU for its partnership in reform efforts.

Dean Richardson discussed OHSU involvement in reform advocacy and the ongoing internal response to prepare for reform, noting that OHSU is ready for the system-focus of reform legislation because of prior hard work, including the integration of the Faculty Practice Plan and the School of Medicine. "This helped break down some of the internal barriers we have to system-wide change," he said. He also focused on the workforce aspects of the legislation, noting the need for new ways of organizing providers to demonstrate new delivery models.   

The OHSU Professional Board recognized outstanding contributions to OHSU with seven awards this month (some are jointly awarded). The award recipients were: Scott Fields, John Vetto, Windy Stevenson, Mark Reller, Jeffrey Koh, Cynthia Perez, Michele Noles, Kenneth Abbey, Arpana Naik, Charles Thomas and Carol Marquez.

The PowerPoint slides for both presentations and a listing of the awards are here (OHSU log-in required).

Pictured: Barney Speight (left) speaking at the meeting and Scott Fields , MD, Professor, Department of Family Medicine, receiving the award for Innovation in New Models of Clinical Care from Brett Sheppard, MD, Chair, Professional Board.