Employees of the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council should be heading back to work today following an executive order issued by Gov. Ed Rendell.

Mr. Rendell signed the order yesterday to revive the state agency, which assesses data on the cost and quality of health care.

Thirty-eight employees -- nearly the council's entire staff -- were informed June 30 by the state Office of Administration that they were being terminated. Several more were let go a few days later.

Efforts were under way yesterday afternoon to contact employees to inform them that their jobs have been restored, said Mr. Rendell's spokesman, Chuck Ardo.

The order also contains language that should allow hospitals to resume sending data to the council for analysis, Mr. Ardo said.

Officials for the Hospital & Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania declined to comment, saying they needed to research the order's legal ramifications.

The order will be in effect until Nov. 30 or until the Legislature takes action to reauthorize the council, whichever occurs first.

Mr. Ardo said that since the state budget was approved last week and it was "the clear legislative intent to fund the agency, the governor chose to interpret that he could go on and authorize the agency until the Legislature did its work."

The Rendell administration has attributed the council's temporary shutdown to a failure to enact reauthorizing legislation. But Senate GOP leader Dominic Pileggi, R-Delaware, said yesterday that the issuing of the executive order proves that the shutdown of the council last week was unnecessary.

While leading Republicans and Democrats support the council, reauthorization has been held up by a partisan squabble involving other issues.

Many Senate Republicans and some Democrats have supported linking council reauthorization to reapproval of the MCare abatement program, which helps doctors pay their malpractice insurance costs.

Mr. Rendell and House Democrats also support restoring the MCare abatements, but have linked their endorsement to significant progress in extending health coverage to the state's uninsured. Their proposal to do so, however, has met a cold reception from Republican leaders.