As Bruce Greenstein takes over as state health chief today, he sees his role as one of implementing and executing Gov. Bobby Jindal’s health-care initiatives.
At the top of the list are the launch this spring of a major overhaul of the way indigent health care is delivered in Louisiana and privatizing some health-care services.
“I’m coming in as an execution specialist,” Greenstein said.
Greenstein said he’s not good at the politics involved in health-care decision-making.
“What I am good at is executing institutional change, looking at alternative ways of carrying things out,” said Greenstein, a former regional administrator for the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Greenstein left a job in Seattle as a Microsoft Corp. managing director dealing with health-care technology to take over that state’s $7.7 billion health-care enterprise.
He said he’s leaving his wife and two young daughters in Seattle for the next month or so “to give me a chance to dig in deep and work long hours without the pressure of getting home.”
Greenstein said he plans to use his Microsoft-gleaned knowledge and connections — looking for ways to use technological approaches to solving problems and making health-care operations run more smoothly in the state.