PROVIDENCE, RI- Rhode Health Insurance Commissioner Dr. Marie Ganim announced today that she plans to retire from state service, effective early January. In her place, Governor Gina M. Raimondo will nominate former Medicaid Director Patrick M. Tigue. The Governor submitted his name to the Rhode Island State Senate today for advice and consent.
"I am extremely grateful for Commissioner Ganim's service to the state and her steadfast commitment to health equity and affordability," said Governor Raimondo. "Ensuring that all Rhode Islanders have access to high-quality, affordable health care has always been one of my top priorities, and it is especially critical in the face of the COVID-19 crisis. I am thrilled to welcome Patrick back to Rhode Island and am confident we will continue our progress under his leadership."
Patrick M. Tigue is an accomplished executive with experience leading and managing critical efforts to achieve strategic health policy goals on a statewide scale across the commercial health insurance market and the Medicaid market. Under Patrick's leadership, Rhode Island's Medicaid program served approximately 300,000 residents with an annual budget of approximately $2.5 billion. Previous to this, Patrick served as director of commercial products at Neighborhood Health Plan of Rhode Island, where he oversaw commercial product line product design, rate development, federal regulatory compliance and state regulatory compliance, and operational coordination with profit and loss responsibility. Earlier in his career, Patrick served as principal policy associate at the State of Rhode Island Office of the Health Insurance Commissioner (OHIC) where he enhanced the efficiency of the Rhode Island health care system by managing the implementation, monitoring, evaluation, and revision of the office's Affordability Standards for commercial health insurers—which require insurers to take actions to promote delivery system reform.
Commissioner Ganim has dedicated more than 35 years to state service in Rhode Island, principally in the area of health care policy. She became Health Insurance Commissioner in 2017 after decades of experience in the executive and legislative branches of government and has worked at the federal, state, and municipal levels. Under her leadership at OHIC, Rhode Island became a national leader in expanding the use of Telemedicine in response to the COVID-19 crisis, created an annual "cost trend" target to curb annual health care spending, instituted mental health parity audits to improve mental health and substance use disorder service provision by Rhode Island's major health insurers, created the Behavioral Health Fund at the Rhode Island Foundation to support community-based providers, and maintained some of the region's lowest health care premiums.