U.S. Representative Rob Bresnahan, Jr. (PA-08) hosted Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz in Scranton for a healthcare roundtable with local stakeholders and officials. Before the roundtable, Bresnahan and Oz visited The Wright Center to tour the facility and meet with staff and leadership.
“Today’s discussion with Administrator Oz and our local healthcare community was extremely productive,” said Rep. Bresnahan. “It was a fantastic opportunity to sit down with local leaders to discuss how we can best implement the Rural Health Transformation Fund and the importance of high-quality healthcare. I want to thank Administrator Oz for coming to Scranton to hear firsthand from our community. We’re committed to delivering real, practical solutions that improve access to care, lower costs, and ensure every community gets the support it needs.”
“The decisions CMS makes in Washington and Baltimore affect Americans in every one of the country’s nearly 20,000 cities and towns — urban, rural, and everything in between,” said CMS administrator Mehmet Oz. “That’s why it’s so important for us to get out of the Beltway and hear directly from people in those communities. I’m grateful to Congressman Bresnahan for bringing together local Northeastern Pennsylvania experts and stakeholders to work toward real, bipartisan solutions that can lower costs, increase access, and improve quality of care.”
During the event, participants discussed topics including Pharmacy Benefit Manager reform, medical modernization efforts, insurance coverage issues, value-based care models, and implementation of the Rural Health Transformation Fund. Afterward, Bresnahan and Oz spoke with members of the press along with Jim Pettinato (CEO of Wayne Memorial Hospital), Dr. Linda Thomas-Hemak (CEO of The Wright Center), Pike County Commissioners Matt Osterberg and Ron Schmalzle, as well as Bob Durkin (President of Scranton Chamber of Commerce).
Dr. Linda Thomas-Hemak highlighted The Wright Center’s role in providing primary care services across Northeast Pennsylvania: “We are sincerely grateful to Dr. Oz, Congressman Bresnahan, and their staffs for visiting The Wright Centers for Community Health and Graduate Medical Education and for recognizing the essential role community health centers, community-based primary care, and physician and health care workforce development play in the health and vitality of our region and our nation,” she said.
She also described their education model: “Our scalable Graduate Medical Education Safety-Net Consortium (GME SNC) model intentionally integrates health care delivery, interprofessional workforce development, innovation, and community voice to provide high-quality, affordable, and compassionate primary and preventive whole-person health services, especially in rural and underserved communities while training 430 residents, fellows, and interprofessional learners annually with strong retention in those communities.”
“At a time when hospital mergers and closures, accelerating health care workforce shortages, and fragile rural health care infrastructures threaten timely access to care,” she added,“our integrated primary care and GME-SNC model serves as both a stabilizing anchor for local health systems and a lifeline for patients and families. It is a profound privilege and honor to share our mission-driven work and the voices of our patients and learners with our distinguished guests.”
Photos from The Wright Center visit are available online.