Executive Chosen to Manage OPTIMA's $400-Million Budget : Reform: Designers of emerging system hope to improve health care delivery to 275,000 Medi-Cal enrollees. New officer has accounting background.

Executive Chosen to Manage OPTIMA’s $400-Million Budget : Reform: Designers of emerging system hope to improve health care delivery to 275,000 Medi-Cal enrollees. New officer has accounting background.

By LESLIE BERKMAN

July 19, 1994 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

SANTA ANA —

A San Diego health care executive has been chosen chief financial officer of an emerging system to improve delivery of health care to Orange County’s 275,000 Medi-Cal recipients.

The $130,000-a-year post will be filled by P. Victor Gonzalez, formerly chief financial officer of Community Health Group, a health maintenance organization serving 40,000 Medi-Cal enrollees in San Diego, officials of the new Orange County program said Monday.

Gonzalez is expected to play a key role in OPTIMA, a community-based organization that is hoped to make Medi-Cal more cost-effective and responsive to local needs in Orange County than the traditional state-run system.

Mary K. Dewane, chief executive officer of OPTIMA, said Gonzalez is a certified public accountant with more than 20 years experience in fiscal management.

One of his tasks will be to help OPTIMA manage its huge projected annual budget, starting at $400 million and perhaps growing to $600 million.

“We look forward to Mr. Gonzalez providing invaluable financial management and planning to OPTIMA as it prepares to begin operation in mid-1995,” said John R. Cochran, chief executive officer of Martin Luther Hospital in Anaheim and chairman of the OPTIMA board of directors.

Cochran said the immense complexity of redesigning a Medi-Cal delivery system and an unexpected swelling of the county’s Medi-Cal program, due in part to growing unemployment, have pushed back the projected starting date for OPTIMA, which was once tentatively scheduled to begin in January.

The next step, Cochran said, is for OPTIMA’s designers to develop a budget and staffing plan for the program, which then must be submitted to state and federal authorities for approval.

The number of employees who will be hired to administer OPTIMA, Cochran and Dewane said, will range between 250 and 600, depending on what system of health care is ultimately adopted. Today the OPTIMA board of directors will meet to begin studying the options presented by its staff, which range from reimbursing physicians for each patient visit to paying health organizations a flat monthly rate for providing a full range of medical services for the patients they enroll.