Health System official to take housing post in mayor's office

After six years with the University, Health System Director of Government Relations Michael Nardone announced plans to take a position with Mayor Ed Rendell's office. Effective May 5, Nardone will become deputy managing director of the city's special needs housing department. He explained that his duties will include "helping to coordinate some of the social safety net programs for the most disadvantaged and advocating on behalf of the least fortunate given the reductions that we're seeing? with regard to welfare cuts." "I like the opportunity of tackling a challenge of this kind and working for the mayor," he added. Since Nardone took on his current position at the University in 1990, he has been responsible for representing the Health System at the state and federal levels and analyzing new government policies that affect the Medical Center. Nardone said his new position "fits in pretty well" with the experience he gained while working for the University. "I'm very familiar with some of the federal efforts to reform the welfare system," he explained. "In a sense, [working for the city] represents getting back to some of those policy issues." Nardone spent much of his time at the University working on Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement with the government, in addition to studying the effects of managed care on academic and medical research. "We really are at a point in the health care marketplace where it is increasingly difficult to fund the bioresearch mission and the medical mission," he said. Nardone added that "one of the things I was involved in was making sure an academic health facility the quality of Penn was protected in a newly defined health care marketplace, and that's the real challenge." In a recent staff memo, Health System Chief Executive Officer and Medical School Dean William Kelley hailed Nardone as a "singular success" in his efforts to make sense out of the changing health care environment. "He has the skills, temperament and will to succeed at this new and vital venture," Kelley added in the memo. And he announced that Health System spokesperson Lori Doyle will fill in for Nardone until a replacement is found. Doyle said she didn't expect to fill Nardone's position for "that long of a time." "The plan is to find a replacement for Mike as soon as we can," she added. Doyle explained that the Health System already has a list of "several potential candidates" to replace Nardone, both from inside and outside of the University. But she refused to identify the candidates, pointing out that "none [of them] have been notified yet."