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Division of Health Planning
Jeff Ockerman, Director

Advisory Committee

The Division of Health Planning has convened a State Health Plan Advisory Committee (Advisory Committee) whose members are experts in health care planning and policy. They serve as a sounding board for the Division of Health Planning and come from a variety of state, public, and business areas. The legislation that created the Division of Health Planning and charges it with developing a State Health Plan makes no provision for an advisory committee. Thus, the members of the Advisory Committee are volunteers with no formal role in the approval and adoption of the State Health Plan or in making revisions to the Certificate of Need standards are criteria. The first meeting of the Advisory Committee was held October 23, 2008. Click here for the minutes of the meeting.

The current members of the Advisory Committee are:

State Government Members:

Chair of the Senate General Welfare, Health, and Human Resources Committee - Sen. Rusty Crowe
Chair of the House Health and Human Resources Committee - Rep. Joe Armstrong
Comptroller of the Treasury, State of Tennessee - Justin P. Wilson
Commissioner of Finance and Administration - Dave Goetz
Commissioner of Health - Susan R. Cooper, MSN, RN
Commissioner of Mental Health and Disabilities - Virginia Trotter Betts
Director of the Bureau of Tenncare - Darin J. Gordon
Executive Director of the Health Services and Development Agency - Melanie Hill

Non-State Government Members:

American Health Planning Association - Arthur Maples, Baptist Memorial Hospital (Memphis), president of the American Health Planning Association
Long Term Care - Bruce Duncan, Assistant Vice President, National HealthCare Corp.
Health Insurance - David Locke, Vice President State Government Relations, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee
Tennessee Hospital Association - Mary Layne Van Cleve, COO
Tennessee Medical Association - Albert J. Grobmyer, III, MD
The public - Rita Geier, Senior Fellow for Public Health, the Howard H. Baker Center for Public Policy, UT-Knoxville
Business - Cristie Travis, CEO, Memphis Business Coalition on Health