Openness in Business (Presentation)

This presentation was given by Mark W. McElroy in testimony on February 12, 2003 to the Vermont Legislature's House Committee on Health & Welfare in Montpelier, Vermont. It was given during the course of the Committee's deliberations on health care regulatory reform. McElroy's remarks were aimed at the proposed provisions (in House Bill H.128) that deal specifically with issues of openness and transparency in the management of Vermont's fourteen regulated hospitals. It should be noted that this testimony came on the heels of a major scandal in Vermont, in which the approved expenditure of capital improvements at the state's largest hospital (Fletcher Allen Health Care) more than doubled, even as senior management there allegedly took steps to conceal its excessive and unapproved plans from state regulators. What started out as an approved plan for $173 million in capital expenditures in September, 2001 eventually grew (in allegedly illicit ways) to what is now roughly $356 million. Since then, managers there have been replaced and the new legislation is, in part, designed to prevent such deceptions from ever happening again in Vermont's health care system. Openness, or the lack of it, has been fingered as a variable that state regulators should be focusing on, and the new (draft) legislation has been crafted accordingly -- with McElroy's specific input. The presentation included in McElroy's testimony is provided below.

DOWNLOAD "Openness in Business ­ What Is It and Why Do We Need It?" by Mark W. McElroy