ACHE Honorary Fellow: Playing a lead role, putting quality in the spotlight

It was an ad in an issue of Life magazine that was responsible for changing the course of William Richardson's life.

As a sophomore at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., planning to go to law school, Richardson saw an ad in the magazine that asked parents, 'Should your son be a hospital administrator?'

“I didn't even know there was such a thing,” Richardson said. But the idea appealed to his interests in law, business and not-for-profit activities, and he soon began voraciously reading material from the American Hospital Association in order to get up to speed on the field.

“By my junior year, I was pretty interested in it,” Richardson said. “I thought that what would really help me would ... (be to) ... work on a ward.”

It was early experiences such as one at a local New Jersey hospital—where Richardson assisted in the general nursing and critical-care units—that taught him about the inner workings of a hospital. Even as he was doing general prep with patients and lunching with nurses, Richardson says he was learning about the economics of healthcare.

That led him to the University of Chicago for an MBA and later a Ph.D. in health policy. But while completing a residency at NYU Hospital while working on his MBA, Richardson volunteered to conduct a study on the utilization of hospital facilities and the economics associated with treating patients requiring varying levels of care.

“That got me very interested in research,” Richardson said.

As then-chairman of the Institute of Medicine's committee on quality care, Richardson played critical roles in developing two of the IOM's most high-profile reports—To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System, published in 1999, and Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century, a follow-up report published in 2001.

“The first time I became aware of his specific work was when he was a member of the Institute of Medicine, responsible for several really landmark commentaries on the healthcare industry,” said Frank Sardone, president and CEO of Bronson Healthcare, based in Kalamazoo, Mich. Richardson has been a member of Bronson's board of trustees since 2009.

But Richardson's research work certainly isn't the only reason the American College of Healthcare Executives recognized him as its 2014 Honorary Fellow, a designation given to an individual who has provided exceptional service to the healthcare field, but who would not normally be a member of the college.

Richardson, now 73, also has had a long academic career, with roles that include professor of health policy and management, dean of the graduate school and vice provost of research at the University of Washington; executive vice president and provost of Penn State University; and president of Johns Hopkins University. In 1995, he became president of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. The following year, Richardson was named chairman and co-trustee of its $8 billion trust. Even since retiring from that role in 2007, Richardson has continued his academic service as a pro bono professor of policy at Kalamazoo College.

“I can't imagine how many people he has influenced,” Sardone said.

Eugene Sunshine, senior vice president for business and finance at Northwestern University, agreed. Sunshine worked with Richardson at Hopkins.

“Bill is just an extraordinary guy in every sense of the word,” Sunshine said. “He's willing to spend a long time talking and listening as a friend, but also as a mentor. He's quite unusual in that regard.”

That was evident from the weekend meetings Richardson held during his tenure at Johns Hopkins, in which he met with Washington officials to persuade them of the importance of reimbursing indirect costs associated with grant-funded research.

“It's not an exaggeration to say that without the proper action of the federal government at that time”—when Richardson was playing a key advocacy role—“that it would have detrimentally affected the ability of the premier research universities to carry out the magnitude and quality of the research they were doing,” Sunshine said.

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