HISTalk did a great job summarizing what this writer found about the new health czar Nancy-Ann DeParle’s ties to healthcare.
According to this writer, new health czar Nancy-Ann DeParle has some deep financial ties to the healthcare industry she’s supposed to reform: (1) she is a managing director for an advisory firm whose affiliate converted a non-profit Idaho hospital to a for-profit; (2) as a Cerner board member, she was paid $195K in stock and cash and held around $1 million of CERN shares at the end of 2007; (3) she was on the board of Triad Hospitals and made $1.4 million on its sale; (4) she’s on the board of medical device maker Boston Scientific, paid $160K and holding $400,000 of stock at the end of 2007; (5) she’s on the board of dialysis vendor Davita, paid $194K and holding $1.8 million in shares in 2007; (6) she was on the board of specialty pharmacy vendor Accredo, now Medco; (6) she made money by selling Guidant shares when it merged with Boston Scientific; (7) she was on the board of Specialty Labs, Inc. and got 38,500 shares, which she sold. Maybe she can reform the system, but so far her talent seems to be in profiting from it. Not exactly the anti-insider that Obama said he wanted all around him.
I should mention that DeParle has resigned from Cerner’s board. Smart decision. I’m not really sure what to think of this list. However, just reading through it gives me that kind of sick feeling that something doesn’t feel right. Reminds me of my previous post aboutAllScripts CEO as Obama’s Healthcare advisor.
I am not sure how I feel about this decesion, On the one hand I think you are going to be hard pressed to find any expert in the healthcare IT field who isnt on the board or related financially to any large software vendor. I mean, the reason they are on the boards of these companies is they know what they are doing.
On the other, I would hate to see a better solutions,certification, and standards policys passed up due to favoritisim and financial gains.
I agree that any expert in Healthcare IT will have ties. I’m not sure the better solution, but it sure seems like there should be something. Possibly that anyone who has ties can not do business with government. She’d either have to divest first or something.
At the end of the day, corruption is probably going to occur either way, but I prefer to live in my alternate world where people actually try to do what’s best and right.