Today, Modern Healthcare released its yearly list of the 50 most influential physician-execs in the U.S. I have to believe that you, my readers, are at least partly responsible (along with my parents and their pals in Boca) for my #19 position, the highest rank of any full-time faculty physician.
As nice as this is, I must admit that seeing myself on this list of movers and shakers is a bit odd. At number 19, I’m sandwiched between people like the leaders of the Mayo Clinic and HCA, and the heads of the Cleveland Clinic, CDC, NIH, FDA, AMA, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. In other words, people who control budgets of billions of dollars.
In contrast, the biggest budgetary decision I’ve made in the last few months was whether to go for the one- or three-movie plan at Netflix.
In any case, thanks much. I am humbled.
About the Author: Bob Wachter
Robert M. Wachter, MD is Professor and Interim Chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, where he holds the Lynne and Marc Benioff Endowed Chair in Hospital Medicine. He is also Chief of the Division of Hospital Medicine. He has published 250 articles and 6 books in the fields of quality, safety, and health policy. He coined the term hospitalist” in a 1996 New England Journal of Medicine article and is past-president of the Society of Hospital Medicine. He is generally considered the academic leader of the hospitalist movement, the fastest growing specialty in the history of modern medicine.
He is also a national leader in the fields of patient safety and healthcare quality. He is editor of AHRQ WebM&M, a case-based patient safety journal on the Web, and AHRQ Patient Safety Network, the leading federal patient safety portal. Together, the sites receive nearly one million unique visits each year. He received one of the 2004 John M. Eisenberg Awards, the nation’s top honor in patient safety and quality. He has been selected as one of the 50 most influential physician-executives in the U.S. by Modern Healthcare magazine for the past eight years, the only academic physician to achieve this distinction; in 2015 he was #1 on the list. He is a former chair of the American Board of Internal Medicine, and has served on the healthcare advisory boards of several companies, including Google.
His 2015 book, The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype, and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age, was a New York Times science bestseller.
Very well deserved, Bob. You are the physician I look to for common sense, evidence-based advice, delivered elegantly and with a touch of humor. Its good to see someone deserving get the awards. Love the blog.
Kevin G. Hart, MD
Congratulations. Your talk at the SHM conference was excellent, second only to Ian Morrison’s. As a Hospitalist in my first year out of residency, I am grateful for your guidance.
I heartily recommend the three movie Netflix plan.
Res Ipsa Loquitur
/one of the influenced
I spent twenty years at The World Famous Mayo Clinic–you wouldn’t fit in there, and I mean that in the best way.
Actually keep the one movie unlimited plan, that way you can then get full time access to 7000+ movies under “Watch It Now” to enjoy on your HTPC and project on your 200″ screen on the calibrated system in the man cave 🙂
Congrats on the ranking!