Marc Volavka, the executive director of the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council (PHC4), a state agency created 20 years ago that collects and analyzes data on the cost and quality of health care, plans to step down.

Volavka, 57, who is currently on medical leave, was appointed as executive director in 1998, five years after he entered the PHC4. Joe Martin, the council’s director of communications and education, declined to say why Volavka has been on leave.

“Marc has been a valuable contributor to the Council and to state government over many years, and we wish him well in his future endeavors,” Council Chairman David R. Kreider, a business community representative to the Council said, according to Fox Business.

His last day of employment had not been determined yet.

According to Lisa McGiffert, who heads the “Stop Hospital Infections” campaign for Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports, Volavka’s departure signals “the end of an era. He had a very clear idea of what he wanted to do and was tenacious in getting it done,” she said.

Before coming to the council, Volavka worked for two decades on the staff of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. He was chief of staff to House Majority Leader James Manderino, a Democrat from Monessen who later became House Speaker.

Volavka’s place was temporary taken by David H. Wilderman, 63, who served as the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO’s Legislative Director from 1982 through 2005. Wilderman appointed Flossie E. Wolf, PHC4’s current Director of Health policy Research, to a new position of Acting Deputy Executive Director.