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Members in Action RON
ASHWORTHSisters of Mercy Health System CEO Ron Ashworth is a passionate advocate for grass-roots solutions to the national health care crisis. And that passion is rooted in practical conviction. Ashworth oversees 18 hospitals in eight states, and knows first-hand what happens to people with nowhere else to turn. They delay care until a crisis occurs, then wind up in the emergency room. Chronic illnesses go unchecked forcing all of us to pay more down the road. “If we’re serious about expanding access and controlling costs, we’ve got to tackle the problem at the community level,” says Ashworth, who helped create St. Louis’s new regional health commission, which brought together players and payers to restructure the local health care system to expand access and battle health disparities. The good news, he says, is that the problems can be solved and there are compelling models from communities that have restructured care and achieved dramatic outcomes. Often the resources already exist, but leaders need insight on how best to marshal and leverage them. That’s where the Communities In Action Campaign steps in, helping local champions engage leaders and organize broad-based coalitions to design connected systems of care that expand access while reducing costs and inefficiency. Ashworth says there are three practical steps any community can take to improve health outcomes and expand access to care:
Bringing business leaders to the table is important, he says, and the message is simple. health care costs are skyrocketing. Employers either pay more or scale back benefits. As employers, we have a vested interest in looking for innovative ways to expand access, improve the health of our workers, and contain costs. 
KAREN
MINYARDKaren Minyard likes to brag that she’s logged over 200,000 rural miles on her car. Like a country preacher, Minyard is a woman on wheels with a mission: bringing proven prescriptions for health care improvement to rural Georgia communities that need help. As Minyard is quick to point out, “communities often have untapped resources, we simply help surface and integrate them in new ways.” In 1997, the state government committed to transforming its rural health care systems in crisis. The goals were financial stability, access for all residents and quality care. Four years later, 73 counties and 17 multi-county health networks are joined in a community infrastructure improvement process that is producing better health for more people at less cost. Minyard’s Networks for Rural Health, a program of the Health Policy Center at Georgia State University, is playing a pivotal part in this transformation. The process is simple. A rural community commits to a vision, restructures care and financing and reinvests for better results. The community leadership team is guided through a systematic process by teams funded by the state and organized by Minyard’s program. Communities are able to achieve a series of dramatic and significant improvements quickly. In Habersham County, for example, a needs assessment determined that more than $600,000 in emergency department services were used in one year for just 70 patients. By creating managed care clinics to serve these patients, the community produced first-year cost-savings of almost $500,000, and surveys showed an 82 percent drop in ER visits and a 39 percent drop in hospitalizations. “Steps that took 18 to 24 months are now carried out in 6 to 9 months,” says Minyard, who helped create the powerful change process and technical assistance program. Habersham County took those results to the state, and a new partnership was built that established a similar care management system in four counties set up to include state employees. Payments based on a per-member-per-month allotment allowed the program to purchase information systems, and hire case managers to cover the larger area. As a windfall of the redesign, the system is able to provide health care for the uninsured because the overall costs to the state is less than the original budget. Other rural communities, such as Emanuel County, also are achieving dramatic results by expanding access to care.
The award-winning program recently won a $250,000 federal appropriation to help other communities replicate the model. Started in 1994, Project Access grew out of growing frustration of doctors with band-aid attempts to care for the county’s estimated 17,000, low-income, uninsured residents, who often ignored or delayed visits to the doctor because of money woes or wound up in local emergency rooms after problems escalated out of control. Private doctors and specialists now donate care valued at more than $4 million annually to patients referred by community clinics through an integrated program that includes access to hospitalization and prescriptions. Virtually all of Buncombe County’s low-income residents now have access to the full continuum of health care. Five-year results not only show improvements in health status, but cost savings as well. Eighty percent of patients report improved health. Local hospital charity care has been reduced 23 percent. Workplace absenteeism is down 13 percent, and 25 percent of recipients report increased productivity. Eager to replicate those results, communities are knocking at Asheville’s door. Twelve communities have similar programs in place, and McKenzie’s troops are working with another 50 interested communities at various stages of replication. Click here for more on Project Access
 MARY
LOU ANDERSENMs. Andersen is a graduate of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science .She was elected Vice-President of the American Pharmaceutical Association and then served for two years as Speaker of the House of Delegates. Two notable changes occurred in the House during that time. The Students in the profession were given official recognition as members in this body, a decision for which she as been honored with the Linwood Tice Award of the APhA. The House members also passed the policy statement that recommended the repeal of the anti-substitution laws in state laws. She was awarded pharmacy’s highest honor, the Rmindgton Medal in 2003. Federal
Career: Since
retirement Personal: Married 50 years to Roger Andersen, 7 children, 13 grandchildren.
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