2nd Year SSU Conference
on Addressing the Health Care Crisis in Sonoma County: What We Can Do Locally
April 23 & 24, 2004

Friday, April 23, 2004, 6:30 - 9:00 p.m.

6:30 - 7:00 Kickoff in the SSU Commons
R efreshments and informal talk

7:00 - 7:55 Applause for and celebration of new, innovative health care programs in Sonoma County - how they work, how they get funded, what we can learn

• Cathy Frey, MHA
  Health Policy & Resource Development Director, Redwood Community Health Coalition, Santa Rosa
  Completing children's health care access through a coalition of health care agencies and providers

• Georgia Berland, M.A.
  Executive Officer, Sonoma County Task Force on the Homeless; Human Services Designs, Healdsburg
  Description of several important, developing collaborative Sonoma County area projects, including the Frequent Users of Health Care Initiative, Health Care for the Homeless, and the Sonoma County Court Homeless Protocol Project

• Jack Burrows, MBA
  Director of Executive Services, Association of Calfiornia Healthcare Districts

• Patricia Andrews, M.A.
  Health Care Initiative Coordinator, Sonoma County Job Link
  Describing the collaboration between the Hospital Council of Northern California, the Healthcare Workforce Development Roundtable, and the Workforce Development Board Health Care Sub-Committee
  
• Marilyn Schlitz, PhD
  Vice President for Reserach and Education, Institute of Noetic Sciences, Petaluma
  Editor, Consciousness and Healing - Integral Approaches to Mind-Body Medicine, Churchill-Livingston/Elsevier Press, London - to be released shortly

8:05 - 9:00 What do other industrialized countries do about citizen health care?

• Gerry Hill, J.D. and Kathleen Thompson Hill, M.A.
  An overview of the health plans of the world's other industrialized countries like Canada, Germany, France, England and Denmark. The Hills have also taught these matters at the University of British Columbia and at the University of Victoria and will teach "The Politics of Health Care" in a special two-day psychology class at SSU on Saturday and Sunday, May 8 and 9, as well as an SSU summer course cross-listed in Political Science, Nursing, and Psychology. For the May and summer classes, please contact SSU Extended Education at 664-2394.

 

Saturday, April 24, 2004, 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.

Conference Day in the SSU Cooperage
No charge for refreshments and lunch for the first 100 registrants
After first 100, $10 request at the door

8:30 - 9:00: Refreshments and informal discussion

9:00 - 12:00 Three dialogues - panels will define subjects and begin to quantify potential savings of each component studied

9:00 - 9:55: Vision on Prevention and Public Health
Preliminary findings on potential plan savings and plan enhancements through prevention, community-based public health, early intervention, body-mind-spirit issues, covered outpatient mental health medical care cost offset effects
Moderator: Karen Taranto, Principal, Prepaid Management/Prepaid Medicine Consulting Group, Inc., Sacramento
Panel: Michael Allen, Chair, Central labor Council and General Manager, Service Employees International Union Local 707; Debora Hammond, PhD, Professor and Director, Hutchins School for Liberal Studies, SSU; Judy Coffey, R.N., Area Manager for Sonoma-Marin Kaiser Permanente Health Plan; Bob Dozor, M.D., Integrative Medical Clinic of Santa Rosa

10:05 - 10:55: Quantitative Issues
Developing independent actuarial perspective on health care rate renewals, foci of utilization analysis, cost of inclusion estimates, reimbursement rate adjustments, estimated costs of replacing key dropped public programs in Sonoma County
Panel: Tom Moore, Consultant, San Francisco; Bob Shirrell, President, Sherrill Consulting, Santa Rosa; Susan Herring, PhD, Professor of Mathematics, SSU; Karen Taranto, Prepaid Management Prepaid Medicine Consulting Group, Sacramento; Jack Burrows, MBA, Director of Executive Services, Association of California Healthcare Districts

11:05 - 12:00: Humane Cost Containment
Driving towards a more systematic and widespread approach to ways humane cost containment can potentially be integrated into our health plans - renewal negotiations with plan design amendments - and how our health plans can work in some more effective arrangements
Panel: Gil Ojeda, Director of California Program on Access to Care, California Policy Research Center, Office of the President, UC System; Tom Moore, Consultant, San Francisco; Patricia O'Brien, Chief Operating Officer, RealCare Insurance Marketing, Sonoma; Karen Taranto, Principal, Prepaid Management Prepaid Medicine Consulting Group, Sacramento; Chris Alesso, Senior Underwriter, Kaiser Permanente Health Plan

12:00 - 1:00 Lunch

Afternoon Sessions will include small group facilitators and people doing charts with concentration on both process and content

1:00 - 2:30

• In Cooperage: Groupings of separate stakeholder clusters at round table discussions
• In 122 Darwin Hall, Academic Presentations by SSU faculty

2:30 - 2:50 Informal dialogue and break

2:50 - 4:20 Cross-stakeholder groups at round tables, "cross-sector" dialogue on what remedies could help and how (and whether) the community can overcome barriers and carry redesign/reform planning further along together

4:20 - 4:45 Wrap up - Comments and conclusions from around the room - Checking for any requests - Does a followup meeting make sense?

Campus Co-Sponsors:

Sonoma State University’s Office of the Provost, School of Science and Technology, School of Social Sciences, School of Business and Economics, Hutchins School of Liberal Studies, School of Extended Education’s Conflict Resolution Certificate Program, the Departments of Anthropology/Linguistics, Biology, Kinesiology, Mathematics, Nursing and Psychology, Health Professions Advisory Committee, Pre-Health Club, and the SSU Initiative on the Health Care Crisis in Sonoma County

Contributing Community Partners:

California School Employees Association, the Service Employees International Union Local 707, the Central Labor Council, the Association of California Healthcare Districts, Integrative Medical Clinic of Santa Rosa, the Politics of Trust Network, and the California Teachers Association

Register for the Conference

For questions, please contact Skip Robinson at skip.robinson@sonoma.edu or, if necessary, leave a message for him at 707-523-2888, noting when you can be contacted.

THIS CONFERENCE IS OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
Also, SSU academic credit or CEUs may be available by special arrangement