March 24, 2011 – Passage may have been the easy part. Implementing the landmark health care legislation to uphold its promise – extending access to quality care while reining in out-of-control costs – is the more difficult challenge. A high-profile guest and a panel of experts at the University of Utah will analyze why it will require a major transformation in the delivery of health care to keep that promise.

On April 1, 2011, from noon to 1:30 p.m. in the Marriott Library Gould Auditorium, former Assistant Secretary of Health Philip R. Lee will emcee a panel with three internationally recognized experts from the medical and policy fields. They will examine how the U.S. systems of health care delivery and finance need to be transformed to generate near-universal access at affordable costs while improving the quality of care. The forum is free and open to the public

Professor Emeritus Lee, from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), is credited with shaping the national discussion on health care reform. From July 1993 through January 1997, Lee served as assistant secretary for health with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Previously, he was director of the Institute for Health Policy Studies at UCSF, which he co-founded in 1972 after serving as chancellor at UCSF for three years. Prior to joining the UCSF faculty, he was assistant secretary for health and scientific affairs in the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and director of health services in the U.S. Agency for International Development. In 1985, Lee was asked to serve as the first president of the newly established San Francisco Health Commission. In 1986, he was appointed chair of the Physician Payment Review Commission established by Congress.

Lee will be joined by Kevin Grumbach, professor and chair of the Department of Family and Community Medicine at UCSF, and chief of family and community medicine at San Francisco General Hospital; Richard J. Sperry, the Governor Scott M. Matheson presidential endowed chair in health policy and management, director of the Matheson Center for Health Care Studies, professor of anesthesiology and associate vice president for health sciences at the University of Utah; and Lucy Savitz, director of research and education at the Institute for Health Care Delivery Research of Intermountain Healthcare, associate professor of clinical epidemiology, and director of the Center for Clinical and Translational Science’s community engagement core at the University of Utah.

The panel will be moderated by Robert Huefner, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Utah.