The Big Impact Tournament

The Big Impact Tournament Winner

According to our readers, and by a nearly 3-to-1 margin, this winner of The Big Impact Tournament was the one person, event, organization or innovation that had the biggest impact on the healthcare delivery system over the past 35 years.

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Do you like The Big Impact Tournament question mark? We do, too. So much so that we made an 11"x17" poster out of it.

Download your copy of the poster PDF and print it for your office wall, your basement game room or anywhere else you display art that's "suitable for framing."

You can learn more about each of the Tournament Contestants in each of the four “regions” by clicking on the link for that person, organization, event or innovation below.

	People	Events	Organizations	Innovations
1	President Barack Obama	Passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act	CMS	Electronic health records
2	Sen. Edward "Ted" Kennedy	Release of the Institute of Medicine's "To Err is Human" report	HHS' Office of the National Coordinator for Information Technology	New models of Integrated delivery systems
3	Donald Berwick	The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act's "meaningful use" IT subsidy program	Centers for Disease Control and Prevention	Clinical and financial performance transparency
4	Gail Warden	Creation of the Medicare Part D prescription drug program	Food and Drug Administration	Patient-safety advocacy
5	Rep. Fortney "Pete" Stark	Passage of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act	Kaiser Permanente	New models of managed care
6	C. Everett Koop	AHERF bankruptcy	National Committee for Quality Assurance	Bundled payments
7	John Wennberg	Creation of Medicare Prospective Pricing System for hospital care	Intermountain Healthcare	Robotic surgery
8	Jack Kevorkian	Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks	Institute for Healthcare Improvement	Minimally invasive surgery
9	Leonard Abramson	Passage of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act	National Quality Forum	Advent of biotechnology and genomics
10	Carol Keehan	Failure of the Clinton healthcare reform plan	Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp.	Disease management
11	Daniel Callahan	The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act's comparative-effectiveness research initiative	America's Health Insurance Plans	Telemedicine
12	Sen. Chuck Grassley	Creation of the State Children's Health Insurance Program	Service Employees International Union	Hospice care
13	Newt Gingrich	Use of the False Claims Act to beef up Medicare fraud enforcement	HIMSS	Retail clinics
14	Paul Ellwood Jr.	Allowing Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans to convert to for-profit status	National Business Group on Health	Group purchasing and supply chain management
15	Rick Scott	The fall of Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp.	MD Anderson Cancer Center	Advancements in imaging technology
16	Richard Scrushy	Passage of the California Natural Death Act	National Association of Insurance Commissioners	Physician practice acquisitions