The newly created Palomar UCSD Health Authority seated its first six-member board of directors Monday, an experienced group of executives who will wield the joint powers of two public entities to provide health care services in North County. Palomar Health’s elected board of directors and the Univ ersity of California Board of Regents approved a joint powers agreement between the organizations in 2025 that they hope will help the state’s largest public health care district thrive after a long period of financial difficulty. One of the authority’s first items of business was to affirm Diane Hansen, Palomar Health’s current chief executive officer, as the CEO of the JPA, which will oversee the day-to-day operations of hospitals in Escondido and Poway and of other assets, such as the medical provider’s outpatient medical offices in inland North County cities. The authority board, which is itself a public entity that will hold public meetings, named retired health care executive Edward Prunchunas its president and UCSD executive Margarita Baggett its vice president. Patricia Maysent, chief executive officer of UC San Diego Health, noted that forming a JPA allows a level of cross collaboration that would otherwise be difficult. “It’s a legal entity formed between two public agencies that come together to jointly exercise power,” Maysent said. “It will allow us to invest together, operate, govern (and) manage both the assets and the liabilities of the authority, and will come together to answer, really, the health care of North County. “It came at the perfect time for UC San Diego Health and is hopefully the perfect time for Palomar Health.” UCSD has committed to helping Palomar expand its services in cancer care, cardiology, and other areas and is hoping that some of its patients will receive care there instead of traveling to the university’s very busy medical centers in La Jolla and Hillcrest. Hansen added that the collaboration should be complementary. “They need beds, and we need (patient) volume,” Hansen said. “I think we can solve challenges on both sides by doing this partnership and coming together.” Bylaws allow Palomar and UC San Diego Health to each appoint three members to the authority board. The university’s appointees include: Baggett, who serves as chief clinical officer at UC San Diego Health. Baggett, a registered nurse, has 27 years of leadership experience, graduating from the Johnson Johnson-Wharton Fellows Program in management for nurse executives and joining the university in 2006. Dr. John Carethers, vice chancellor for health sciences at UCSD. Carethers leads the university’s medical, pharmacy and public health schools on campus. He returned to UCSD, where he spent 15 years at the school of medicine, after a 13-year tenure at the University of Michigan. Dr. Ehtisham Mahmud is a board-certified interventional cardiologist who specializes in complex coronary procedures at UC San Diego Health. He is the division chief of cardiovascular medicine at Sulpizio Cardiovascular Center and is credited with publishing more than 100 papers in peer-reviewed medical journals. Palomar’s appointees include: Pauline Gourdie is the chief executive officer of CSL Staffing, a company she established in 2016 after a career in supply chain management and customer relationship management, after earning an industrial and labor relations degree from Cornell University. Born in Scotland, her career took her to the United Kingdom, Eastern Europe and China with IBM. She is a member of the Escondido Chamber of Commerce and of Palomar Health’s charitable foundation. Prunchunas rose through the executive ranks during a 24-year career at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, retiring in 2022 as vice president and chief financial officer. He continues to consult with Cedars and is a past fellow of the Healthcare Financial Management Association. Charlene Zettel, currently serving as a commissioner of the California Fair Political Practices Commission, finished a 12-year term as a University of California regent in 2021 under an appointment by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who also named her director of the state’s Department of Consumer Affairs in 2004. She represented the 75th Assembly District from 1998 to 2002, a region that included inland North County communities. She also served as chief executive of Donate Life California, the state’s nonprofit organ donation administrator, and as interim director of the San Diego and Imperial Counties division of the American Red Cross in 2017 and remains a member of that organization’s board of directors. ...read more read less