Ricketts selected as member of national Health Care Workforce Commission

Thomas Ricketts, PhD, professor of health policy and management at UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, is one of 15 national experts appointed to the new National Health Care Workforce Commission. The Commission is an independent body that advises Congress and the administration on health workforce policy.

 

Ricketts also serves as deputy director for policy analysis at UNC’s Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research and is co-director of American College of Surgeons Health Policy Research Institute. He is a Gillings visiting professor with Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sante Publique in France.”Today’s appointees bring impressive expertise and professional credentials to their role of advising policymakers on ways to improve the health care workforce, which is so essential to ensuring the health and safety of the American people,” said Gene L. Dodaro, Acting Comptroller General of the U.S. and head of the GAO, in making the announcement.

 

“This commission gives us the opportunity to develop new ways to modernize our workforce to meet the challenges of increasing access and quality of health care while we control costs,” Ricketts said. “We need to examine how we prepare and deploy our doctors, nurses, dentists, pharmacists and the many other health care practitioners to meet the nation’s future health care needs. In many ways, we have been trying to run a system for the 21st century with 20th century approaches.”The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act established the Commission to serve as a national resource for Congress, the President, and states and localities; to communicate and coordinate with federal departments; to develop and commission evaluations of education and training activities; to identify barriers to improved coordination at the federal, state and local levels and recommend ways to address them; and to encourage innovations that address population needs, changing technology and other environmental factors.

The Act requires the Comptroller General to appoint Commission members for staggered three-year terms, so the first set of appointments will last one, two or three years. Ricketts will serve three years, with his appointment expiring in September 2013.

Other commissioners who will serve three years include Peter Buerhaus, PhD, RN, commission chair and professor of nursing and director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Health Workforce Studies at Vanderbilt University Medical Center; Sheldon Retchin, MD, MSPH, commission vice chair, UNC public health alumnus, and vice president for health sciences at Virginia Commonwealth University and chief executive officer of the VCU Health System; Brian J. Isetts, PhD, professor of pharmacy at University of Minnesota; and Harold M. Maurer, MD, chancellor, University of Nebraska Medical Center.

Other commissioners include Mary Mincer Hansen, RN, PhD, Des Moines University; John E. Maupin Jr., DDS, Morehouse School of Medicine; Neil M. Meltzer, MPH, Sinai Hospital, Baltimore, Md.; Fitzhugh Mullan, MD, George Washington University; Steven Zatkin, JD, health plan consultant, Oakland, Calif.; Katherine A. Flores, MD, University of California at Fresno; Kim Gillan, Montana State University; Lisa Renee Holderby, Community Catalyst; Deborah King, 1199 SEIU Training and Employment Funds; and Richard Krugman, MD, University of Colorado-Denver.

UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health contact: Ramona DuBose, director of communications, 919-966-7467 or ramona_dubose@unc.edu.