With the first of three roundtable discussions on health care reform behind him, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) is targeting July as a deadline to introduce legislation to improve the nation’s health system.

Max Baucus

Baucus and the members of the Senate Finance Committee held their first roundtable April 21, gathering numerous stakeholders to weigh in on the issue and legislative challenges in reforming the U.S. health care system.

As part of a future timeline for action by his committee, Baucus announced subsequent roundtable sessions planned for May 5 and 14 and the July deadline for the group to start marking up legislation.

Baucus said the roundtables are “where the rubber meets the road.”

“Our economy is in crisis, and health care reform is the only way we are going to get it back on track,” Baucus, the Senate committee’s chairman, said in a statement. “What we hammer out at these roundtables is going to be the cornerstone of the legislation that we pass in coming months.”

Among those appearing at the first roundtable were representatives for Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, the Engelberg Center for Health Reform at the Brookings Institute and Danville, Pa.-based Geisinger Health System.

Glenn D. Steele Jr., Geisinger’s president and CEO, testified that some of the actions taken by the company to help patients can be applied nationally as part of comprehensive health reform.

“The innovations we have instituted at Geisinger that bundle payments for acute care procedures, enhance support for primary care physicians and their care teams, better manage chronic disease and the transitions of care for patients from caregiver to caregiver, have produced significant cost savings and improved quality,” Steele said. “I believe that what we have accomplished can be adopted nationally and will achieve similar cost savings while improving quality. This would result in significant positive consequences for large payors, particularly Medicare.”

Baucus has made health care reform his top priority this year. The senator has said that his three goals for any legislation are to lower costs, improve quality and ensure that every Montanan has quality, affordable health care, according to a statement.