Rationalizing Health and Human Services
Author: Charles D. Baker, Jr.
The proposal to rationalize health and human services presumes that EOHHS would eliminate its existing operating agencies over time and replace them with an integrated Secretariat organized along functional, rather than product, lines. In this model, each operating division would be led by a commissioner, who would report directly to the Secretary of Health and Human Services. The implementation process would happen one commissioner consolidation at a time and would take place over at least a two-year period. Each one would involve the development and submission to the legislature (and presumably to the public) of a timetable for consolidation, a set of deliverables as the process unfolded (staffing, resources, responsibilities, key interfaces), and a set of metrics on which each commissioner would expect to be measured going forward.
