50 Most Influential Physician Executives – 2017
Rank: 27
Robert Wachter
Chairman of the medicine department, UCSF Medical Center
Dr. Robert Wachter, now chair of the medicine department at UCSF Medical Center in San Francisco, is an international leader in healthcare quality, safety and health policy and is credited as the founder and academic leader of the rapidly growing hospitalist specialty in medicine. He was founding chief of UCSF's hospital medicine division and is also past president of the Society of Hospital Medicine and past chairman of the American Board of Internal Medicine. Wachter edits the U.S. government's leading website on safety and has written two books on the subject, Internal Bleeding and Understanding Patient Safety. He also penned the 2015 bestseller The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine's Computer Age.