Countywide : Six Nominated for New Health Agency

County health care officials have recommended six volunteer representatives to serve on the governing board of a new authority that will create a prepaid medical system for all Medi-Cal recipients in Orange County.

The recommended list, including three consumer representatives and three representatives of health care providers, is scheduled to go to the County Board of Supervisors for approval Tuesday.

Health care advisers to the supervisors suggested candidates to the County Health Care Agency, which made the final recommendations. The nominees were selected from more than 120 applicants.

In addition, the county supervisors will choose a representative and alternate among themselves to serve on board of directors of the proposed quasi-governmental agency, to be known as Orange Prevention and Treatment Integrated Medical Assistance, or OPTIMA.

One of the board’s most pressing tasks will be to contract with hospitals, doctors, existing managed health care organizations and others to provide a full range of health care services to Medi-Cal recipients.

The health provider representatives nominated were Dr. Peter Anderson, director of emergency services at Fountain Valley Regional Hospital; John R. Cochran III, chief executive of Martin Luther Hospital; and Dr. Richard S. Frankenstein, a pulmonary disease specialist in Garden Grove.

Nominees to represent the consumer are Arthur B. Birtcher, co-chairman of Birtcher, a Laguna Niguel-based land development company; Joyce M. Munsell, manager of health care resources for Parker Hannifin Corp. in Irvine; and Claire P. Heaney, a nurse.

“The challenge for the board of directors will be to develop and implement an innovative and unique program in a very short period of time which will be the largest countywide health system by far in the state of California and in the United States,” said OPTIMA Project Director Marianne Maxwell.

Maxwell said a web of health care delivery networks for Medi-Cal recipients is expected to be put together and begin operation in January, 1995, when OPTIMA will take responsibility for the health care of more than 250,000 Orange County residents.

Orange County is one of three new sites designated by the state with the approval of the federal Medicaid program to set up a countywide organized managed health care system for Medi-Cal beneficiaries. Santa Barbara and San Mateo counties already have such systems but on a much smaller scale.

The purpose of a prepaid system, in which physicians and other providers will be assigned patients and receive a certain fee each month to attend to their health care needs, is to improve medical care to the poor, who often face difficulty finding primary care doctors who will accept them as patients under the Medi-Cal system.