Health Care Hall of Fame Past Inductees

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Inducted in 2021

Stephen Shortell, a professor of health policy and management and dean emeritus at the University of California Berkeley's School of Public Health, likes solving problems, from the pages of the detective books he reads to his decades-long career in health policy research.

Trying to figure out ways to improve healthcare performance and delivery for a living, Shortell said, “is even better than being a detective.”

“You get to commit your own crimes and then solve them,” he said. “I’m a very curious person. I like to find out things. I like to have an impact.”

Those in the industry say Shortell’s fingerprints are on countless innovations in the healthcare organizational space. From his voluminous writings on healthcare performance to his work on integrated care delivery systems that influenced the accountable care concept in the Affordable Care Act, and the many students he’s mentored who make up new generations of health policy researchers, Shortell “has been everywhere doing (and) leading, important, widely read and used work,” said Tom Rundall, the Henry J. Kaiser Professor of Organized Health Systems Emeritus at Berkeley and a co-director, with Shortell, of the university’s Center for Lean Engagement and Research.

“He is one of the truly elite health services scholars over the last 50 years,” Rundall said.