UnitedHealthcare nabs Pronovost from Johns Hopkins

Dr. Peter Pronovost, director of the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality at Johns Hopkins and a prominent leader on care quality issues, will leave the organization in February to join UnitedHealthcare.

In a Twitter post on Thursday, Pronovost announced he accepted a role at the Minnetonka, Minn.-based insurer as senior vice president for clinical strategy.

"I spent my career working to improve quality, safety and value by engaging physicians, building teamwork and sharing best practices. … Now I get to bring that and my clinical perspective to UnitedHealthcare," said Pronovost in an interview with Modern Healthcare on Friday. "This has the potential to accelerate what I've been doing at much larger scale; that's so exciting for me."

In a statement, UnitedHealthcare said, "Pronovost's patient-centered approach to care and deep clinical expertise will help bring a provider point-of-view deeper into UnitedHealthcare and improve how payers and care providers work together to share best practices, build appropriate value-based incentives and effectively use data to improve the patient experience."

Pronovost has led the Armstrong Institute since 2011. He is also the senior vice president for patient safety and quality at Johns Hopkins Medicine.

Pronovost has helped transform how providers handle patient safety issues particularly through his work on central line-associated bloodstream infections. Pronovost in 2001 developed a step-by-step checklist to prevent such infections, which significantly lowered their occurrence. Checklists are now widely used by providers across the country.

A replacement for Pronovost has not yet been announced by Johns Hopkins.

—Harris Meyer contributed to this report.