Here & Now

Golden and Olsen discuss the Wisconsin Idea

Frederica Freyberg:

You both wrote about being close collaborators who became friends while serving the Wisconsin Idea and the state. First to you Dean Golden, on what did you both collaborate?

Robert Golden:

Oh many fun projects. Some small, some enormous. I think one of the most game-changing ones was the integration of what had been two separate organizations: the UW Medical Foundation Physician Group with the UW Hospitals and Clinics through the Authority Board and bringing those together was a daunting challenge that we together successfully helped navigate.

Frederica Freyberg:

What was your role senator?

Luther Olsen:

I was a board member. I’m on the executive board in Finance and Audit so being involved– when I come to the hospital for meetings, I’m here from early morning till 4:30 in the afternoon and so lots of discussions over the years. And we really discovered that as we were trying to look at expanding the hospital, it was very hard for us to explain our system because you got the medical foundation, you got the UW Hospital and Clinics and all this. So it was just wiser to consolidate those into one organization. And when you have organizations that have been separate for a long, long time and have sort of the same interests but different ways of operating. It was a challenge but it was very successful.

Frederica Freyberg:

So the challenge is now complete. How meaningful is this integration of these two systems?

Robert Golden:

It’s very meaningful. For our patients, it means that it’s much easier to navigate the system even if the building itself is sometimes difficult to navigate. It means at a simple level that patients get one bill instead of two separate bills. But at a more meaningful level, it means that for our strategic planning as we try to decide the best way to keep people healthy and to serve those when they do get ill. It’s not a two-headed monster. We’re all rowing together in the same direction. We have, for example, acquired a community hospital in northern Illinois and we continue to make relationships and outreach across the state. And it’s less complicated, still complicated, but it’s less complicated when we are one organization instead of two.

Frederica Freyberg:

And so it makes it easier, senator, to explain what it was you were efforting to do?

Luther Olsen:

I could never really explain it before so it was really complicated. I think it was only a few people that really could. But it is. It’s much easier and then now were involved in Meriter and so that relationship is easier from our end rather than them having that hospital and then a two-headed monster over here.

Frederica Freyberg:

What about the importance of these other kinds of programs that you’re now embarked on including access in rural areas and access in urban areas. Collaboration as well between the two of you?

Robert Golden:

Oh absolutely. The School of Medicine and Public Health has longstanding academic relationships through our Wisconsin Academy of Rural Medicine and our urban counterpart, the TRIUMPH Program. Now though we are able to reach out and find ways to partner in the clinical enterprise for the practice plan and the health system together as one entity to form relationships to see where we can have. For example with ProHealth, a health system in the Southeast, we are able to partner with them in providing state of the art cancer services there for their patients. And that arrangement is going really well in part because we are one rather than two.

Frederica Freyberg:

And as a state senator what role has that played in terms of all of these collaborations with this large enterprise being UW Health?

Luther Olsen:

Well it makes it easier to explain to the legislature, my colleagues, what’s going on out here and how it operates if they care. I mean it’s a big operation and we’re an authority so we are not a state agency. We’re an authority having ties to the state of Wisconsin. And so I just think that it makes it cleaner and it makes us more efficient and able to move forward at a rapider pace because you get people on the ground floor together working so that when you have an idea, it’s easy. Everybody’s on the same page and in the same room.

Frederica Freyberg:

Does Wisconsin stand out for these kinds of robust partnerships between the university and the state in your mind?

Robert Golden:

I believe it does and talking with colleagues around the country, it’s unusual to have such a close relationship between the state government and the health system. And it’s especially unusual for it to be such a positive relationship as the one we have here. Sometimes it’s more kind of oversight and more criticizing without really working together. Whereas with the representation that we’ve enjoyed with Senator Olson and with currently Representative Born on our board, it’s true working relationship as a partnership.

Frederica Freyberg:

And why did you both want to make public this collaboration and do this kind of Wisconsin Idea outreach if you will?

Luther Olsen:

Well I think it’s important that people– they know Madison. They know the university. They know the hospital but it was important that they understand and we could explain a little bit to folks what the grasp that the hospital has in the state of Wisconsin and how it affects and needs to affect even more. No matter where you live. If you live in Ripon where I live or Rhineland or you know Door County or southwestern Wisconsin, that we are the state’s hospital. And to understand that you have to understand that it’s more than just a building in Madison, Wisconsin. It is the state.

Frederica Freyberg:

And so is this a definition of the Wisconsin Idea then?

Robert Golden:

I think it’s one of the best embodiments of the Wisconsin Idea and it keeps growing. And I really feel that because of the close relationship we have with the state, we are now nationally and internationally recognized based on how much we have engaged with the people of our state. It serves really as a national model.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right we need to leave it there. Thanks very much.

Luther Olsen and Robert Golden:

Thank you.