Medical Alley Day at the Capitol
Monday, February 24, was Medical Alley Day at the Minnesota State Capitol, bringing together legislators with the health technology and care organizations that power Minnesota’s economy and make it The Global Epicenter of Health Innovation and Care™.
Legislators met with representatives of MAA member companies from all over the health technology and care spectrum through individual legislator meetings and a luncheon with Speaker Hortman, Majority Leader Winkler, and Senate Majority Leader Gazelka.
Legislators also had the opportunity to engage with our members at the Medical Alley Showcase in the Capitol Vault. The vault featured Be the Match, Boston Scientific, Ecolab, Grandpad, Medtronic, Pops Diabetes Care, Smiths Medical, Starkey Hearing Technologies, and Tactile Medical.
Here are some pictures from the day:
Thank you to all our members who participated in the 2020 Medical Alley Day at the Capitol. We look forward to working with all of you, advancing Medical Alley as The Global Epicenter of Health Innovation and Care™.
On the Hill: MAA in Washington, D.C. Advocating for Medical Alley Priorities
MAA President & CEO Shaye Mandle and Vice President of Strategic Growth and Policy Bobby Patrick traveled to Washington, D.C. for in-person meetings with members of Minnesota’s congressional delegation to advocate for Medical Alley Association’s 2020 Federal Legislative Agenda (attach).
While there, Shaye and Bobby met with Representatives Tom Emmer, Dean Phillips, Angie Craig, Ilhan Omar, and Pete Stauber, as well as staff from the other Minnesota House and Senate offices. They also had the pleasure of meeting with the Senior Advisor to the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, William Brady.
The pair impressed on the group the importance of Medical Alley to Minnesota’s economy and the need for federal policy that enables health innovation and care companies located in Minnesota to continue developing technology and other breakthroughs that improve the lives of patients in the United States and throughout the world. They thanked our elected officials again for the full repeal of the medical device tax at the end of 2019.
We greatly appreciate the opportunity to meet with, and the support of, these members of Minnesota’s congressional delegation. We look forward to working with each of their offices as we advance Medical Alley as The Global Epicenter of Health Innovation and Care™.
Healthcare Transformation
Solving healthcare’s greatest challenges requires bringing every stakeholder to the table. With a diverse cross-sector membership, Medical Alley is uniquely positioned to facilitate conversations regarding health care solutions. So far in 2020, Medical Alley demonstrated this leadership position through three events:
Cookies and Conversation
In early January, we cohosted the first of a series of talks that bring together representatives from across the healthcare spectrum, as well as legislative leaders, to discuss healthcare issues from a holistic standpoint. This first event covered the value of clinical trials for cancer patients in Minnesota, and was led by a panel that represented the wide range of stakeholders involved in clinical trial access and effectiveness:
- Senator Michelle Benson, Chair Senate Health & Human Services Finance and Policy Committee
- Monica Theis, Breast Cancer Survivor, ACS-CAN
- Nancy Torrison, Executive Director, A Breath of Hope Lung Foundation
- Dr. Michaela Tsai, Martha Bacon Stimpson Chair of Breast Oncology and Medical Director of Oncology Research, Virginia Piper Cancer Institute
- Ping Yeh, Cofounder and CEO, StemoniX
Senator Benson and Representative Hunter Cantrell were our special guests for this panel; we look forward to partnering with members from our community to host similar events throughout the year to advance critical causes like this one.
Value-Based Healthcare Roundtable
In February, U.S. Representatives Angie Craig (MN-2) and Dean Phillips (MN-5) joined a group of leaders from the Medical Alley community for a roundtable discussion on the progress toward value-based care in the state.
The discussion was lively as topics ranged from how to payers and providers can communicate with one another better so that patients aren’t getting mixed signals to innovative ways to encourage patients to adopt better habits between visits to the doctor, such as food pharmacies. Throughout the discussion, patients were the focus with questions like “How can we engage patients better?” and “How can we really affect the cost of care for patients while maintaining a culture of innovation?” producing highly engaged conversation.
One of the points of agreement was the uniqueness of the Medical Alley community in its willingness to work collaboratively to push forward patient-centric solutions. Even as participants agreed that Minnesotan’s received world-class care thanks to the state’s vibrant health innovation and care community, they were eager to discuss ways Medical Alley can transform healthcare to better serve patients, while lowering the cost of care.
Medical Alley Healthcare Ecosystem Hearing: Powering the Evolution of Healthcare
This week at the Capitol, four innovative Medical Alley companies testified in the Senate HHS Finance and Policy committee on the evolution of healthcare in Minnesota. Miromatrix Med, Nightware, Nuvaira and StemoniX described the process of developing their patient centered innovation and answered questions from the committee.
We are grateful for the unique opportunity to highlight the health technology and care industry in a legislative committee.
Tours with Minnesota House of Representative Speaker Melissa Hortman and Representative Pete Stauber
MAA joined Speaker Hortman, who is currently serving in her eighth term in the Minnesota House and second year as Speaker, in an interactive tour at Abbott’s Cardiac Arrhythmias and Heart Failure facility in Plymouth. We also joined Rep. Stauber, a staunch supporter of both the USMCA and the device tax repeal, for a tour at Smiths Medical’s manufacturing site in Oakdale that employs over 300 workers and produces devices that affect more than 400 lives every minute. Tours like these are critical for giving legislators a better sense of how their work impacts our industries, for developing legislative champions, and, ultimately, for advancing Medical Alley’s policy agenda.
