Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey has tapped Kate Walsh, president and CEO of Boston Medical Center, to pb the state's sprawling wellness and quality services secretariat, the largest section successful authorities authorities that manages everything from MassHealth to the kid payment strategy and the opioid epidemic, according to a root acquainted with the search.
“Kate Walsh is precisely the person Massachusetts needs for this infinitesimal successful wellness care,” Healey said successful a statement. “She has a proven way grounds of delivering results connected wellness equity, affordability and behavioral health, portion besides addressing societal determinants of wellness similar nutrient and lodging insecurity. She volition bring an innovative and compassionate attack to the bureau that centers the needs of patients and providers.”
“I’m honored to articulation the Healey and Driscoll Administration as Secretary of Health and Human Services,” Walsh added. “This is simply a captious infinitesimal for our state, arsenic we proceed to code the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, widening wellness disparities, skyrocketing healthcare costs and a devastating behavioral wellness crisis. Together, we volition work to beforehand racial health equity, address affordability, spur innovative solutions to our wellness attraction challenges, and guarantee that radical unrecorded steadfast lives.”
At @The_BMC, Kate delivered results connected equity and affordability. She understands precisely however basal concerns similar nutrient and lodging interaction health.
I cognize she'll attack this occupation with creativity and passion, and I cognize she'll halfway patients and providers each measurement of the way.
Walsh has led wellness attraction organizations astir the greater Boston country for decades.
She started arsenic elder vice president astatine Massachusetts General Hospital 1988, past moved to pb the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research successful 2002, and joined Brighman and Women's Hospital arsenic enforcement vice president and CEO successful 2004 earlier starting astatine BMC successful 2010.
Walsh received her bachelor's grade and a Master of Public Health from Yale University and besides served connected boards astatine the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, American Hospital Association, Boston Public Health Commission, Massachusetts Health & Hospital Association, Association of American Medical Colleges, America's Essential Hospitals and the Pine Street Inn, according to BMC.
In her relation arsenic CEO of BMC, Kate Walsh advocated connected Beacon Hill for greater resources for behavioral wellness care, and led a collaborative to make affordable lodging successful Dorchester, Roxbury and Mattapan to bid and link Black and Latinx residents with full-time jobs successful wellness care, exertion and biotech industries.
"At Boston Medical Center, we spot the consequences of unstable lodging and a deficiency of economical accidental reflected successful the wellness of our patients connected a regular basis," Walsh said successful 2020 when the collaborative secured a $5 cardinal grant.
As the caput of the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, Walsh volition pb a section that oversees 12 authorities agencies and the MassHealth program, with a combined fund of implicit $27 cardinal and 22,000 nationalist employees. According to the EOHHS website, the services and programs that autumn nether the office's oversight correspond 53% of the state's fund and supply attraction to 1 successful each 3 residents.
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