Press Ganey taps Lee for CMO post

Dr. Thomas Lee, the network president for the Boston-based Partners HealthCare system, will join Press Ganey on July 1 as its chief medical officer. In hiring Lee, a practicing cardiologist and co-chair of the Committee for Performance Measures of the National Committee for Quality Assurance, the nation's leading patient satisfaction consulting firm adds one of the nation's leading voices for improving quality by focusing on value and collaboration in healthcare operations.

“Dr. Lee has demonstrated a steadfast commitment to improving the patient experience and will be pivotal to our efforts in helping providers meet the objectives of the triple aim,” Patrick Ryan, CEO of Press Ganey, said in a prepared release. “There is a movement to transform this industry, to better serve patients as we control costs and improve quality. Dr. Lee brings a deep appreciation for the value of patient feedback as well as the importance of physician alignment with the improvement insights derived from the voice of the patient.”

Lee, who oversaw quality improvement programs for Partners Community Healthcare's 4,500 physicians and 1.5 million patients, said he was excited to be joining South Bend, Ind.-based Press Ganey. The firm "has a critical role to play in providing seminal analysis and insights based on the voice of the patient,” he said. “As organizations transform their operations in response to the dynamic healthcare environment, there are numerous opportunities to focus improvement strategies based on data specific to unique patient populations and provider cultures.”

Lee is the author of more than 250 academic articles and two books, “Chaos and Organization in Health Care,” and the forthcoming “Eugene Braunwald and the Rise of Modern Medicine.” Lee has been a professor at Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health, as well as an associate editor of the New England Journal of Medicine. He also serves as an adviser to the Congressional Budget Office and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and serves on the board of Geisinger Health System. He's a graduate of Harvard College and received his medical degree from Cornell University Medical School.

Writing three years ago in the New England Journal of Medicine, Lee noted the importance of focusing on the patient experience as a measure of value. “Provider organizations need to capture data on the outcomes that matter to patients, as well as the costs for a patient over meaningful episodes of care,” he wrote. “These data are essential for assessing whether value is improving.”