For Immediate Release
Contact: Modern Healthcare
312.649.7849
Chicago, April 20, 2013: Modern Healthcare has announced its ninth annual list of the 50 Most Influential Physician Executives.These physician executives are recognized for leading their organizations through tough financial times and budgetary uncertainty while helping to shape and transform the nation's evolving healthcare system from one that rewards volume to one that promotes quality and value. This year's list includes leaders from state and local government, regulatory agencies, public and non-for-profit hospitals and health care systems, associations and institutions, universities and solution providers.
Dr. Gary Gottlieb, president and CEO of Partners HealthCare in Boston, is the only person to have made the list since its inception in 2004. According to Gottlieb, what the nation has built is an "illness-care system," and what society now wants is to preserve the gains on the illness side while "building a true healthcare system."
Dr. Peter Pronovost, senior vice president for patient safety and quality at John Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore, a fellow 2013 honoree, says healthcare quality suffered from the "bystander effect," where people cared about the problem but thought someone else was working on it. He adds that if hospitals had quality committees that functioned like finance committees, "we would transform healthcare in this country."
"The physician executives on this year's list were chosen because they are bold experimenters providing innovative solutions to the cost and quality problems plaguing our healthcare system," said Merrill Goozner, editor of Modern Healthcare. "Governor John Kitzhaber of Oregon was selected as our most influential physician for 2013 after he won bipartisan support for a radical transformation of his state's Medicaid program. If successful, his efforts could serve as a model for the entire nation."
