This story has been updated.
Dr. Deidre Gifford, a key adviser to Gov. Ned Lamont during the COVID-19 pandemic as a physician who simultaneously ran the departments of social services and public health, intends to retire next month from her current post overseeing the Office of Health Strategy.
Lamont said Thursday the 66-year-old Gifford informed him a month ago of her intention to retire after six years in his administration, beginning in June 2019 as the commissioner of social services. In 2020, the firing of a public health commissioner thrust her into a dual role, running that agency as well as the DSS.
“I will always be grateful to the governor for trusting me to be by his side during some of the most difficult days of the pandemic, and to serve as his advisor in the years since,” Gifford said in a statement.
Her departure comes months after bribery charges were brought against a former state official and former lawmaker for their alleged roles in influencing the Department of Social Services to cancel an audit of suspected Medicaid fraud at a Bristol optometry practice in 2020.
Konstantinos Diamantis, the former deputy budget director, was charged in February with accepting $95,000 in bribes to pressure state officials to cancel an audit for Helen Zervas, the owner of Family Eye Care and the fiancée of former state Rep. Christopher Ziogas, D-Bristol, who also was charged.
The DSS audit director John McCormick sent an email to Gifford on May 5, 2020, explaining Zervas would voluntarily repay nearly $600,000 to the state Medicaid program and in return McCormick’s team would discard the audit.
On May 12, 2020, the same day Diamantis and Ziogas delivered the money to DSS, Gifford took over DPH, a job she held on an interim basis until September 2021. Gifford left the DSS job in January 2023 to take over the Office of Health Strategy, which was spun off from DPH in 2018 to manage Connecticut’s certificate of need process on health system closures, expansions and consolidations, and monitor the rising cost of health care across the state.
Zervas pleaded guilty in February to fraud and conspiracy charges. Diamantis and Ziogas were indicted the same month in a complaint that did not name any other public official.
Lamont, who praised Gifford’s service in all three posts, said a brief interview her retirement was neither sought nor related to the audit. He said she expressed a desire to spend more time at a home she and her husband purchased in Rhode Island, where she formerly was the state Medicaid director.
In a statement released later Thursday, he offered only praise about her service.
“I firmly believe that she is one of the reasons why many people consider Connecticut’s response to this global virus to be among the best. She has been dedicated to developing policies and data-driven solutions that expand access to healthcare, improve disparities, and drive costs down,” Lamont said.
Gifford’s husband, Dr. David Gifford, is the chief medical officer of the American Health Care Association and is on the faculty of Brown University Medical School and School of Public Health. He is the former health director of Rhode Island.