Health Care Committee

Committee Staff: Liz Pettengill, (410) 727-2820, x41

Chair: The committee is chaired Marilyn Carp, chairperson of the Board of Directors of Maryland General Hospital. 

Members: Health Care is a large committee with about 40 members, including Skip Counselman, CEO of Riggs, Counselman, Michaels & Downes; Christopher Brandt, CEO of Audacious Inquiry; Bonnie Phipps, CEO of St. Agnes Health Care; and Carmel Roques, CEO of Keswick-Multicare.

What does the committee do:
• The committee is focused now on providing information to small- and medium-sized companies about ways to reduce their health care costs. This includes learning about the prevalence of specific chronic diseases in the workforce, the effects of the Affordable Care Act on smaller businesses, the costs of mental and behavioral health issues, how the patient centered medical care model works, and the costs to business of healthcare disparities.

What has the committee done:
• For the last two years, the Health Care Committee has worked closely with the Healthiest Maryland initiative under the auspices of the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. As a partner in the Healthiest Businesses component of Healthiest Maryland, the Health Care Committee signed up 130 private companies to participate in programs that would encourage workforce wellness. The Health Care Committee now works directly with Healthiest Maryland to bring wellness symposia and other relevant information to participating companies and organizations.

GBC is an advocate for Healthiest Maryland, a statewide initiative to create a culture of wellness in the workplace. Every month, Healthiest Maryland chooses a workplace wellness success story the exemplies how Healthiest Maryland programming can create a culture of wellness in your organization. See who has been honored!

Health Care News

UPCOMING EVENT: Friday, June 7 - 4th Annual Maryland Workplace Health & Wellness Symposium (Register)
Hear from Deputy Surgeon General Boris D. Lushniak and New York Times bestseller Chris Crowley on the importance of wellness, creating a step-by-step plan for your workplace wellness program and partnering with community resources.

UPCOMING EVENT: Monday, April 22 - Getting the Most out of Your Health Care Dollars (Register)
Hear from industry experts about how you can maximize the value of your health care dollars under the Affordable Care Act. Learn how best to allocate your health care dollars.

3/19/13 - Join Legg Mason for their March 27 event, STOP! The Cost of Chronic Disease at Work, featuring speaker retired First Sergeant Matthew Eversmann, whose actions were immortalized in the film, Black Hawk Down

3/5/13 - Workforce wellness programs can have a noticeable benefit to your bottom line if evaluated correctly, and can improve the quality of life for employees, strengthen the value of their benefits and reduce health-related business costs, a Baltimore-area psychology professor recently reported to the GBC's Health Care Committee.

Evaluation goes hand-in-hand with success. Employers can directly facilitate health behavior change in their employees, which could jumpstart and sustain their wellness programs and reduce health care costs in the long term, according to UMBC's Dr. Carlo C. DiClemente, professor and chair of the Department of Psychology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and director for the HABITS Lab at UMBC.

(Read the full article and view Dr. DiClemente's PowerPoint presentation)

2/8/13 - This American Heart Month, Healthiest Maryland Businesses is asking employers to take action in the workplace to promote heart health. Employers can take preventive action to improve worker health and productivity and save on health care costs. Please consider doing a couple of these simple things.

1/29/13 - January 29 meeting recap - David Johnson, senior vice president of RCM&D, outlines findings from a workforce wellness programs survey.