On Oct. 16, 2011, Donna Baver Rovito was installed as president of the Pennsylvania Medical Society Alliance.
Donna was born in Philadelphia and grew up in Hazleton, PA, where she worked for a variety of newspapers and radio stations until moving to the Lehigh Valley in 1983 after she married newly graduated surgical resident Peter F. Rovito, MD. Following the completion of his general surgery residency at Allentown’s Lehigh Valley Hospital, Dr. Rovito opened a solo, private general and bariatric surgical practice in 1988.
They have two sons: Peter, a junior at Penn State’s University Park Campus who hopes to attend medical school and become a surgeon, and Tony, a junior at Allentown Central Catholic High School. Both sons participated in varsity swimming, and in 2011-12 will be Donna’s fifth season as “Team Mom” for 30 or 40 swimmers and divers.
In her “spare” time, Donna enjoys making jewelry, singing in the adult contemporary choir at Allentown’s Cathedral of St. Catharine of Siena, cooking, reading, and hanging out with their four-year-old Rottweiler/lab mix Mouli.
In addition to serving on the PAMPAC Board and as Legislation Chair, Donna has held a variety of positions with the state Alliance, including President-Elect, Eastern District Vice President, Second District Councilor, and Eastern Regional Director.
For the Lehigh County Medical Society Alliance, Donna she has served as Legislation Chair, President-elect, President, and currently serves as one of three co-Presidents.
During the upcoming year, Donna hopes to generate greater involvement by spouses of members of the Pennsylvania House of Delegates by inviting them to participate in Alliance educational sessions at Convention and the presidential installation and reception, as well as presenting an Alliance display and information at the AMES Fund/PAMED President’s inauguration dinner. Donna is a strong proponent of what she calls “growing the family of medicine” by focusing attention on the “Friends of the Alliance” category, which proposed changes in state bylaws would allow greater involvement and flexibility. She supports reaching out to allied health care professionals, community leaders, close friends of Alliance members who already help out with Alliance events, and others who share Alliance goals of advocating for doctors and patients and helping to create healthy communities.
“We all have a friend or family member who would love to be involved in Alliance activities, and now there are even more reasons that they can do just that in support of our shared goals,” she says.
Donna would also like to develop an unofficial bipartisan Alliance “lobbying team” comprised of regular and “Friend” members of the Alliance with legislative connections due to personal involvement with grassroots organizations and county and state political parties.
“There are many people, including members of the family of medicine who aren’t currently involved with the Alliance, who share our positions on medical liability reform and other issues which affect Pennsylvania’s health and who might be persuaded to join in our efforts to advocate for Pennsylvania's doctors and patients. I propose to reach out to as many of them as possible, to get them involved with the Alliance, and to assist PAMED whenever legislative advocacy is needed.”
She also hopes to create a statewide Doctors’ Day initiative to distribute voter registration and absentee ballot materials at hospitals and doctors’ office buildings. “I don't think there’s any better way for us to show doctors that we appreciate them on Doctors’ Day than to help them exercise their right to choose elected officials who best reflect their desire to take the best possible care of their patients.”
Donna also plans to create a sub-committee within the Health Projects Committee to communicate with the PA State Department of Health on important health awareness issues in Pennsylvania. The idea for this sub-committee grew from a highly productive meeting at the PA Capitol during Confluence in April with the Pennsylvania Secretary of Health, Dr. Eli Avila. Upon learning that the Alliance reaches into communities on health care issues, the Secretary expressed interest in an ongoing relationship with the Alliance in order to help disseminate important information about Pennsylvania’s unique health issues.
“This subcommittee,” says Donna, “is an outstanding opportunity for the Alliance in two ways. It will help to establish our credibility as a strong partner to the medical society in the area of health awareness, but it will also allow us to get some new people involved in Alliance activities.” An initial meeting of this sub-committee will be held at the Capitol shortly after Donna takes office, and one of the health issues which could be on the agenda is Pennsylvania’s high concentration of Lyme Disease.
Donna brings a passion for health care advocacy. She has been making noise about health care for almost two decades. A journalist and broadcaster with a Penn State journalism degree from back in the days when “copy and paste” involved rubber cement, Donna notes that she is probably writing more today than she ever did when anyone actually paid her to do it. In recent years, Donna's articles and opinion pieces have been published in the Washington Post, Philadelphia Daily News, Harrisburg Patriot, Allentown Morning Call, American Medical News and more, and have been cited in the Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Managed Care Magazine, Central Pennsylvania and Philadelphia Business Journals, Physicians’ News Digest, "France One," a French television network, and more. Her speaking engagements have taken her from medical society events to the steps of the PA Capitol and to the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol. She brings multiple perspectives to health care issues as a 15 year breast cancer survivor, the longtime spouse of general surgeon and a mother.
Donna was recruited as legislation chair for the Lehigh County Medical Society Alliance following successful advocacy campaigns (not by herself, of course) for passage of a 1995 Pennsylvania state DES bill and a 1999 federal compensation plan for cold war nuclear weapons workers. She was later recruited to serve on the PAMPAC Board as one of three Alliance representatives, eventually becoming secretary of the organization, as well as Legislation Chair for the Pennsylvania Medical Society Alliance, a position she held when the medical liability crisis began to impact Pennsylvania medicine in 2001. (Donna served as Legislation Chair from 2000-03, and again from 2006-09.)
Utilizing her journalism and broadcasting skills to write and speak widely about the crisis, she worked closely with the Pennsylvania Medical Society and the Alliance to advocate for medical liability reform, creating an anecdotal list of physicians who had either left Pennsylvania or altered their practices due to skyrocketing medical liability premiums. The list, known as Pennsylvania’s Disappearing Doctors, was used by media and elected officials to demonstrate the severity of Pennsylvania’s medical liability crisis. She coordinated Alliance efforts to assist in a long term advocacy campaign mounted by the Pennsylvania Medical Society which helped to earn the Pennsylvania Medical Society Alliance the AMA Alliance’s inaugural LEAP award for legislative action and awareness in 2003.
In 2002, PAMPAC awarded Donna the R. William Alexander, MD, Award for "recognition of contributions to the medical profession through grassroots political involvement and advocacy” and in 2003 she received special recognition from the Board of Trustees of the Pennsylvania Medical Society for “tireless efforts and countless contributions during 2002 as legislative chair of the Pennsylvania Medical Society Alliance in an effort to achieve meaningful tort reform and to save Pennsylvania medicine.”
Also in 2003, Donna was one of six national finalists for AMPAC’s Belle Chenault Award for political participation on behalf of medicine. Most recently, Donna received special recognition from the board of the Lehigh County Medical Society for her ongoing efforts for medical liability reform in Pennsylvania.
Since 2002, Donna has edited an online newsletter about medical liability and health care reform called "Liability and Health Reform Update" (previously Liability and Health News Update), which is emailed to thousands of readers and appears in its own blog. The newsletter and blog, which have no connection to PAMED or PMSA, also serve as legislative and political action tools.
Donna has been involved in numerous political campaigns in recent years in support of candidates who support medical liability reform and quality health care. She served as Doctors’ Outreach Director for the 2004 Bush Cheney Campaign, Pennsylvania coordinator for Doctors for Santorum in 2006, Pennsylvania coordinator and campaign surrogate for Health Care Professionals for McCain/Palin 2008, and Pennsylvania coordinator for Health Care Professionals for Toomey in 2010.
And in 2007, she managed media and public relations for a close friend’s central Pennsylvania county commissioner’s campaign. She has served as a campaign surrogate for several state and federal candidates and educated many on issues that impact health care. Donna is a graduate of the AMPAC Campaign School, which she highly recommends for all Alliance members with any interest in political involvement.
Most recently, Donna was elected Chair of the Lehigh Valley Coalition for Health Care Reform, a new grassroots non-profit organization dedicated to advocacy and education about health care reform. The group held its first educational workshop on Sept. 17, Constitution Day, at DeSales University, attracting participation by national organizations and advocacy groups and featuring nationally known health care reform experts and physician advocates. Hundreds attended the local forum, with even more viewing a live streaming broadcast and archived recording of the event.
Earlier this year, Donna was nominated by Governor Tom Corbett, confirmed by the Senate of Pennsylvania, and sworn in by Pennsylvania Secretary of State Carol Eichle ( on July 14, 2011) as a consumer representative on the state board that licenses, regulates, and provides oversight for real estate appraisers in the Commonwealth, an ironic appointment, she says, since her primary qualification to serve on the State Board of Real Estate Appraisers is the fact that she knows nothing at all about real estate or real estate appraisal – as mandated by Pennsylvania law.
Read
Donna's inaugural address, which outlines her agenda for the upcoming year.