Tooker stepping down

The American College of Physicians, the nation’s second-largest physician group, is looking for a new boss.

John Tooker, the ACP’s executive vice president and CEO since July 2002, announced at the organization’s recent Board of Regents meeting that he will step down as soon as a replacement is found.

“My decision was influenced by a family member’s health, and my desire to spend more time with my family,” Tooker said in a news release. “Until a new EVP/CEO is named, I will continue to be fully committed to ACP’s mission and to our internist members and their patients.” A replacement is expected in the next six to 12 months, according to the ACP.

Tooker, 65, joined the Philadelphia-based, 129,000-member internal medicine specialty society in 1995 and worked as its deputy executive vice president and chief operating officer.

Earlier this year, Modern Healthcare readers voted Tooker No. 86 on the 100 Most Powerful People in healthcare ranking (Aug. 24, p. 6). He attributed his selection to the growing recognition of the importance of primary care, and the role his organization has played in healthcare access, delivery, workforce and payment reform.

Tooker chairs the National eHealth Collaborative board and is on the board of the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology. He is credited with making the ACP one of the leading promoters of health information technology. “I don’t believe the ACP would be as deeply involved without John Tooker’s leadership,” said Frederick Turton, an internist with a private practice in Sarasota, Fla., who chairs the ACP Board of Regents. He added that Tooker anticipated the role of health IT in the “healthcare accountability sphere.”

“His ability to make sure things followed the right path and got to the right people is really uncanny,” Turton said. “My position as chairman is often ‘Let’s just get it done,’ but John would go to this group and that group and make sure there was buy-in. … He would arrive at meetings with a stack of policy statements that were already carefully vetted.”

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