The executive director of the Utah Department of Health is resigning to take a similar post in
Virginia, leaving in part because of the Legislature's 1992 move to drop a requirement that the department's executive director be a physician.Dr. Suzanne Dandoy's resignation is effective in mid-July, when she becomes deputy commissioner for Health Care Services in the Virginia Department of Health.
No replacement has been named for Dandoy, and none is expected to be named until the next gubernatorial administration, which takes office in January.
Dandoy said the Legislature's decision "sent a clear message that policymakers in Utah do not value a physician's expertise in the position of state health officer." She said the legislative move also precipitated the departure of Dr. Brett Lazar, the department's former deputy director who resigned in May to take a job in Maryland.
"It increased the chances that we would not have been kept on because the Legislature apparently wanted the option of having this position filled by a non-physician," said Dandoy.
Sen. Chuck Peterson, R-Provo, who introduced the 1992 bill, said, "The way the law was before, it excluded many career health-industry professionals who would make excellent department heads but didn't have an MD degree."
Peterson said the new law mandates that the deputy director be a physician if the executive director is not.
Dandoy does not believe that is sufficient.
"I have never heard anyone suggest that a paralegal be the attorney general. Presumably, people want the state's legal issues addressed by an attorney," she said. "They put their medical care in the hands of a physician. Why shouldn't they put the community's health in the hands of the best trained person?"
Dandoy, a preventive-medicine specialist, came to Utah in February 1985 to direct the department. A California native, she had previously headed Arizona's health department.
Among her accomplishments, according to a Health Department press release:
- Appointing a citizens' AIDS Advisory Committee.
- Combining an increase in the state cigarette tax with Medicaid funding to pay for the Baby Your Baby program, an education drive aimed at young mothers.
- Striking a written agreement with the U.S. Army for notification and oversight of biologic defense testing at Dugway Proving Ground.
- Increasing Medicaid funding to rural health facilities.
- Conducting two state surveys of the uninsured Utahns.
- Enforcing a moratorium on new nursing-home beds to increase the use of current facilities.