Elisabeth Belmont: Making Health Care Work
Growing up in small-town Sanford, Maine, Elisabeth Belmont learned firsthand the challenges of navigating the multifaceted health care delivery system from her father, a physician and surgeon whose office was attached to the family home. These challenges affected the health care experience of relatives, friends, and neighbors throughout her community. “I learned that quality health care was not as simple as finding a competent physician,” says Belmont. “Rather, the complexities of health care raised myriad legal and policy issues to which I was drawn.”
As corporate counsel for MaineHealth, the largest integrated health care system north of Boston, Belmont reacts daily to a broad set of varied challenges including corporate organization and governance, hospital-physician relationships, patient care and consent issues, and information technology acquisition and licensing.
“Ongoing changes in the health care landscape resulting from financial, regulatory, and technological pressures require health law practitioners to be generalists with near-specialist depth knowledge in a variety of practice areas,” explains Belmont. “Serving as in-house counsel, I’m on the ‘front lines’ of health care delivery and the related legal and health policy issues.”
While still a student at Maine University School of Law, Belmont confirmed her interest in health law with a law review article focused on the Maine Health Security Act, which imposed certain duties on the governing body of every licensed hospital. That article led to clerking for Maine Medical Center’s legal affairs department, and after graduating from law school in 1983, independent contracting there as well. In 1985, she was named the center’s associate general counsel, and subsequently when the department relocated to the offices of its Portland-based parent corporation, MaineHealth, in 1998, Belmont was named corporate counsel.
When not making legal decisions for a corporation comprising five hospitals and various other health care organizations, Belmont keeps busy as the newly elected president of the American Health Lawyers Association (AHLA), the nation’s largest nonpartisan, nonprofit educational organization devoted to legal issues in the health care field. As president, Belmont intends to work to ensure that the award-winning association meets its strategic and budgetary goals while serving the members’ needs for health law information, education, and dialogue.
A longtime member of AHLA, Belmont has spearheaded a variety of public-interest activities, including the publication of a consumer-friendly series addressing emergency preparedness, long-term care options, and more recently pan-flu preparedness. “As a health care lawyer and consumer,” says Belmont, “I realized that our association could provide enormously beneficial information to busy, hardworking Americans trying to navigate the complexities of our health care system.”
In April 2007, Belmont was named one of the 25 most powerful women in health care by Modern Healthcare magazine. Honored by the distinction, Belmont nonetheless says, “I tend to think of myself as a health care attorney rather than viewing myself through the prism of gender.” The increasing number of women in leadership positions in the health field supports Belmont’s perception: “Women clearly are making strides in closing the gender gap and face fewer obstacles today in achieving professional success than in the past,” Belmont adds. “The need in health care for capable and visionary people continues to increase as we look at ways to improve the quality of health care and reform the system as a whole. Because of the increasing need for such leaders, qualified women will have opportunities they may not have had in another era.” DB
Patrick Folliard is a freelance writer based in Silver Spring, Md.
From the July/August 2007 issue of Diversity & The Bar®