Moderator
Kerry N. Weems, Master of Business Administration
10/7/2008

It’s my pleasure now to bring up the Acting Administrator of CMS, Kerry Weems. Good morning everybody and thank you Governor for that gracious introduction and thank you for coming today. We’re extraordinarily fortunate to be able to hold this conference in Massachusetts, which right now is the number one e-prescribing state in the nation, the highest percentage of e-prescribing of any state. I also want to thank the Governor and his staff for the hard work--the open exchange of ideas that took place recently on the Massachusetts Medicaid waiver negotiations. In particular, I’d like to single out JudyAnn Bigby of the - who is the Secretary of Health and Human Services in Massachusetts for her extraordinary hard work in helping us get to agreement. This is really a model of the way that the federal government and states working together. Dr. Bigby was a thoughtful and gracious negotiating partner and I’m very grateful for having that experience and the people of Massachusetts are served extraordinarily well by the Governor and his able staff.