Local political consultant joins El Camino Hospital board

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with the results of the Healthcare Board members’ votes, information that was not available in time for the version of this story that appeared in the newspaper.

After rapid-fire interviews and a handful of questions, the El Camino Healthcare District board chose a Stanford lecturer, longtime political consultant and vocal opponent of the Affordable Care Act to join El Camino Hospital’s governing board.

The district board voted 3-2 in a secret ballot to add Lanhee Chen of Mountain View to the nine-member hospital board at a June 16 meeting. Chen was one of three finalists at the meeting to give their pitch for why they would make a good addition to the board if appointed to the seat vacated by Nandini Tandon, who did not seek a second term. Chen’s three-year term began on July 1.

At the Voice’s request, El Camino officials later disclosed details about how the five health care district board members voted on the appointment after the Voice’s press deadline had passed. Board members David Reeder, John Zoglin and Peter Fung voted for Chen and Dennis Chiu and Julia Miller voted for Meg Kellogg.

That vote was conducted by paper ballot during the public meeting but El Camino officials did not announce the votes at the meeting as required by state law. The Brown Act requires that any written ballots be tallied in open session, publicly indicating how each elected official voted.

Chen’s extensive political background includes serving as Mitt Romney’s chief policy adviser during the 2012 presidential election, which included developing all of the domestic and foreign policies of the Romney-Ryan 2012 campaign. He is a staunch critic of the Affordable Care Act, and has railed against it on social media, on television news and in his Bloomberg View column since its inception.

Chen was also the policy director and deputy campaign manager for Steve Poizner’s California gubernatorial bid in 2010, a role in which he oversaw campaign public policy positions and media messaging. He currently sits on the national Social Security Advisory Board, and is a lecturer at Stanford University.

The El Camino Healthcare District board is made up of five publicly elected members who oversee the taxpayer-funded district, but also serve a dual role as members of the hospital board that oversees management of hospital operations. In an effort to improve governance of the hospital and bring in more expertise, the district board decided in 2012 to appoint four additional members to the hospital board.

One of the other two candidates, Kellogg, has spent the last 15 years as a health care consultant for Kaiser Permanente, the Pan American Health Organization, and financial institutions including the World Bank. She is also the program director for the Global Health Leadership Forum at the University of California, Berkeley, which is a collective of health care executives focused on innovations in technology and finding new ways to work with health care providers.

Another candidate, John McCreedy, is an entrepreneur who founded and managed several businesses designed to market health care services. At the meeting, McCreedy said he wanted to bring consumerism into the health care industry, similar to the marketing he did while working at Procter & Gamble. His most recent venture is San Francisco-based PartneraHealth, which acts as a general consulting firm for hospitals.

Chen said it’s important for the hospital to be forward-thinking as the Affordable Care Act reaches full implementation and reducing health care costs becomes a top priority for the country.

“Health care over the next 25 years will look nothing like what it’s looked like for the last 25 years,” Chen said. “To be stuck in the thinking of the past, I think, is the biggest mistake that an institution like this one can make.”

While Chen touted a deep understanding of the complex new health care law, he said it’s also helpful to be a Mountain View resident, just across the street from the hospital, who is familiar with health coverage in the area. He said El Camino Hospital needs to continue to engage independent physicians in the Bay Area and maintain constructive and sometimes competitive relationships with Stanford Hospital and the Palo Alto Medical Foundation.

“I think understanding the dynamic of the area … is going to be critically important as the hospital goes forward,” Chen said.

District board member Dennis Chiu questioned how familiar Chen was with the inner workings of hospitals, and asked him how many hours he has spent working “solely” on health care-related operations and policies. Chen’s answer was a ballpark number of 400 hours. Chiu later told the board that Chen’s apparent lack of experience beyond an advisory capacity makes him a less attractive candidate.

“It does affect my opinion as to who is more capable (and) who has seen more of the health care industry outside of theory,” Chiu said.

When asked how he felt about the Affordable Care Act and how it will affect hospitals, Chen said the new health care law has both positive and negative elements, and that it’s too early to say. He said one of the biggest issues coming up is the so-called “Cadillac tax,” which will put a hefty 40 percent excise tax on the most expensive insurance plans as of 2018.

“This is really going to change how employers think about the provision of health care services to their employees,” he said.

In an October Bloomberg View column, however, Chen called the plan a “job-slashing, deficit-deepening disaster,” and later said the plan led to higher premiums, lost jobs and slow economic growth.