A former hospital administrator, a CEO, and three lawyers – one who’s also a doctor – made the Travis Co. Commissioners Court’s final cut Tuesday to serve on the new hospital district board. One of those five could be the consensus appointee of both the county and the City Council, which expects to vote on its choices July 29 to round out the nine-member board.

Commissioners selected Tom Young, a semiretired health care consultant and former Brackenridge Hospital administrator; Frank Rodriguez, CEO of Capital Linkages Inc., and a former Austin city manager and budget director; Clarke Heidrick, a lawyer and chairman of the hospital district steering committee; Carl Richie II, lawyer and former member of the Austin Housing Authority Board; and Dr. Donald Patrick, a lawyer, physician, and executive director of the Texas State Board of Medical Examiners. Heidrick, Richie, and Young are among the city’s 12 finalists.

The city also short-listed Jason Cooke, a former division director for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission; Dr. Thomas Coopwood, a former trauma surgeon at Brackenridge; Dr. Camille Hemlock, associate medical director with the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation; Victoria Hsu, outgoing director of the Texas Board of Professional Engineers and former member of the city’s Water and Wastewater Commission; Lynn Hudson, a former director of managed care operations at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center; Rose Lancaster, former executive director of Manos de Cristo, an East Austin dental clinic for low-income families; Rosie Mendoza, a CPA and a member of the Austin Travis County Mental Health Mental Retardation board; Henry Narvaez, a community liaison assisting AIDS patients through the Wright House Wellness Center; and Dr. Catherine Scholl, an anesthesiologist, a member of the hospital district steering committee, and past president of the Travis Co. Medical Society.

Once the hospital district board is established, directors will have just a very short time to create a budget and appoint a CEO to head the district.

This article appears in July 23 • 2004.

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Amy Smith has been writing about Austin policy and politics for over 20 years. She joined The Austin Chronicle in 1996.