- You both wrote about being close collaborators who became
friends while serving the Wisconsin Idea and the state.
First to you Dean Golden, on what did you both collaborate?
- Oh many fun projects.
Some small, some enormous.
I think one of the most game-changing ones was the
integration of what had been two separate organizations: the UW
Medical Foundation Physician Group with the UW Hospitals and
Clinics through the Authority Board and bringing those
together was a daunting challenge that we together
successfully helped navigate.
- What was your role senator?
- I was a board member.
I'm on the executive board in Finance and Audit so being
involved-- when I come to the hospital for meetings,
I'm here from early morning till 4:30 in the afternoon
and so lots of discussions over the years.
And we really discovered that as we were trying to look at
expanding the hospital, it was very hard for us to explain our
system because you got the medical foundation,
you got the UW Hospital and Clinics and all this.
So it was just wiser to consolidate those
into one organization.
And when you have organizations that have been separate for a
long, long time and have sort of the same interests but different
ways of operating.
It was a challenge but it was very successful.
- So the challenge is now complete.
How meaningful is this integration of these two systems?
- It's very meaningful.
For our patients, it means that it's much easier to navigate
the system even if the building itself is sometimes
difficult to navigate.
It means at a simple level that patients get one bill
instead of two separate bills.
But at a more meaningful level, it means that for our strategic
planning as we try to decide the best way to keep people healthy
and to serve those when they do get ill.
It's not a two-headed monster.
We're all rowing together in the same direction.
We have, for example, acquired a community hospital in northern
Illinois and we continue to make relationships and outreach
across the state.
And it's less complicated, still complicated,
but it's less complicated when we are one organization
instead of two.
- And so it makes it easier, Senator, to explain
what it was you were efforting to do?
- I could never really explain it before
so it was really complicated.
I think it was only a few people that really could.
But it is.
It's much easier and then now were involved in Meriter and so
that relationship is easier from our end rather than them having
that hospital and then a two-headed monster over here.
- What about the importance of these other kinds of programs
that you're now embarked on including access in rural areas
and access in urban areas.
Collaboration as well between the two of you?
- Oh, absolutely.
The School of Medicine and Public Health has longstanding
academic relationships through our Wisconsin Academy of Rural
Medicine and our urban counterpart,
the TRIUMPH Program.
Now though we are able to reach out and find ways to partner in
the clinical enterprise for the practice plan and the health
system together as one entity to form relationships
to see where we can have.
For example with ProHealth, a health system in the Southeast,
we are able to partner with them in providing state of the art
cancer services there for their patients.
And that arrangement is going really well in part because
we are one rather than two.
- And as a state senator what role has that played in terms of
all of these collaborations with this large enterprise
being UW Health?
- Well it makes it easier to explain to the legislature,
my colleagues, what's going on out here
and how it operates if they care.
I mean it's a big operation and we're an authority
so we are not a state agency.
We're an authority having ties to the state of Wisconsin.
And so I just think that it makes it cleaner and it makes us
more efficient and able to move forward at a rapider pace
because you get people on the ground floor together working so
that when you have an idea, it's easy.
Everybody's on the same page and in the same room.
- Does Wisconsin stand out for these kinds of robust
partnerships between the university and the state
in your mind?
- I believe it does and talking with colleagues around the
country, it's unusual to have such a close relationship
between the state government and the health system.
And it's especially unusual for it to be such a positive
relationship as the one we have here.
Sometimes it's more kind of oversight and more criticizing
without really working together.
Whereas with the representation that we've enjoyed with Senator
Olsen and with currently Representative Born on our
board, it's true working relationship as a partnership.
- And why did you both want to make public this collaboration
and do this kind of Wisconsin Idea outreach if you will?
- Well I think it's important that people-- they know Madison.
They know the university.
They know the hospital but it was important that they
understand and we could explain a little bit to folks what the
grasp that the hospital has in the state of Wisconsin and how
it affects and needs to affect even more.
No matter where you live.
If you live in Ripon where I live or Rhineland or you know
Door County or southwestern Wisconsin,
that we are the state's hospital.
And to understand that you have to understand that it's more
than just a building in Madison, Wisconsin.
It is the state.
- And so is this a definition of the Wisconsin Idea then?
- I think it's one of the best embodiments of the Wisconsin
Idea and it keeps growing.
And I really feel that because of the close relationship we
have with the state, we are now nationally and internationally
recognized based on how much we have engaged with the people
of our state.
It serves really as a national model.
- All right,
we need to leave it there.
Thanks very much. - Thank you.