Dr. Richard Baron is the Group Director of Seamless Care Models, at the Innovations Center at CMS. His portfolio includes innovative ACO models and models of high value, comprehensive primary care. Before joining CMS in April, 2011, Dr. Baron practiced general internal medicine at Greenhouse Internists, P.C., a 7 physician practice located in the Philadelphia area.  Dr. Baron’s practice was a pioneer in the comprehensive adoption of electronic health records in the small practice environment and Greenhouse Internists is participating in a Patient Centered Medical Home pilot in Southeastern Pennsylvania; the practice achieved level 3 recognition from NCQA in August, 2008.

Dr. Baron served as Chief Medical Officer of Health Partners, a not-for-profit Medicaid HMO set up by four teaching hospitals in Philadelphia, from 1988 to 1996.  He was the architect of the Best Clinical and Administrative Practices program, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Center for Health Care Strategies, working with medical leadership of Medicaid health plans around the country in learning collaboratives to improve the quality of care for their members.  This program reached plans serving more than half of the Medicaid managed care population in the U.S.  He is past Chair of the American Board of Internal Medicine’s Board of Directors and currently a Trustee of the ABIM Foundation.   Dr. Baron was awarded the Pennsylvania Laureate Award and was named a Master of the American College of Physicians in 2010;  the College also gave him the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Award for “Innovative Contributions to Internal Medicine” in 1996.  He was named “Practitioner of the Year” by the Philadelphia County Medical Society in 2010.

Watch Dr. Baron's webinar interview about clinical innovation with Emmy-award winning director and writer David Grubin, and read his Progress Notes interview about the Comprehensive Primary Care Initiative.

Dr. Tom Bodenheimer is a general internist who received his medical degree at Harvard and completed his residency at UCSF. He spent 32 years in primary care practice in San Francisco's Mission District – 10 years in community health centers and 22 years in private practice. He is currently Professor of Family and Community Medicine at University of California, San Francisco. He is co-author of the books Improving Primary Care: Strategies and Tools for a Better Practice (McGraw-Hill, 2006), and the health policy text book Understanding Health Policy, 5th edition (McGraw-Hill, 2008). He has written numerous health policy articles in the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Marjorie A. Bowman, M.D., M.P.A., is Professor and Chair, the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health of the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania, and Director, Center for Public Health Initiatives, The University of Pennsylvania.   After earning her M.D. degree at Thomas Jefferson University, Dr. Bowman did a family medicine residency at Duke University Medical Center and then earned a master's degree in public administration at Washington Public Affairs Center of the University of Southern California.  She is board-certified in both Family Medicine and in Preventive Medicine (Public Health and General Preventive Medicine).  She has worked in the Department of Health and Human Services in health policy work, and as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Public Health Service.  Dr. Bowman is a former Assistant Dean at Georgetown University School of Medicine, and former Department Chair of Family and Community Medicine at Wake Forest University.  Dr. Bowman is founding director of The Center for Public Health Initiatives, a university-wide initiative started in 2007 to advance Public Health at Penn.  She has served as a consultant to several branches of government and many universities, and is widely published in areas of behavior change, health personnel, women’s health, and community health.
 

Dr. Jeffrey Brenner, MD is a family physician who has worked in Camden, NJ for the past twelve years.  Dr. Brenner owned and operated a solo-practice, urban family medicine office that provided full-spectrum family health services including delivering babies, caring for children and adults, and doing home visits to a largely Hispanic, Medicaid population.  His life’s goal is to ensure that all families who live in urban, under-served communities receive high quality, culturally competent, personalized family health care.

 
Dr. Brenner attended Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and completed a Family Medicine residency at the Swedish Health Center in Seattle, Washington.  Dr. Brenner is the Director of the Institute of Urban Health at Cooper Hospital where he has spearheaded innovative solutions for improving the health of urban, under-served communities.  Recognizing the need for a new way for hospitals, providers, and community residents to collaborate,  he founded and has served as the Executive Director of the Camden Coalition of Health care Providers since 2003. The Camden Coalition is a non-profit organization, committed to improving the quality, capacity, and accessibility of the health care delivery system in Camden.  Dr. Brenner's work involves building complex collaborations amongst three highly competitive hospitals, two local FQHC's, social service providers, and small private medical offices in Camden.  Through the Camden Coalition, local stakeholders are working to build an integrated, health delivery model to provide better care for Camden City residents.
 
Dr. Brenner’s work was profiled by the writer and surgeon Dr. Atul Gawande in an article in The New Yorker entitled “The Hot Spotters” (1/24/11) and in an episode of PBS Frontline (7/27/11).

Campbell Brown is one of the most respected and recognizable faces in American news. She is an award‐winning journalist who has covered stories around the globe for CNN and NBC News. Most recently, Brown hosted the primetime nightly news program, Campbell Brown for CNN. While at CNN, Brown won accolades for her political coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign. Brown was chosen to moderate and direct questions at two of the Presidential Debates during the 2008 election. Prior to CNN, Brown spent 11 years at NBC News where she served as White House Correspondent and primary substitute anchor for Brian Williams on NBC Nightly News. Brown also hosted the weekend edition of the Today Show, the nation’s top‐rated weekend news program. She has interviewed and profiled world political and business leaders, including the last three sitting Presidents.

Dr. Cheng is a Professor of Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health and Division Chief of General Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. Her clinical work and research focuses on addressing child health disparities, youth development and primary care models of care for improved child health outcomes authoring over 100 articles on these subjects and the future of pediatric primary care.  Her early research focused on surveillance and identification of risk and protective factors for youth violence in urban communities with later research developing, implementing and evaluating interventions in primary care, emergency departments, schools and the community.  She was previously a member of the Health Resources and Services Administration’s Advisory Committee on Training in Primary Care Medicine and Dentistry. Past President of the Academic Pediatric Association, she is also a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Pediatric Research, liaison to the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Federal Government Affairs and is Associate Editor of Pediatrics in Review.  Her goals are to integrate clinical work, teaching and research toward effective models of care, mentor a diverse community of health professionals and researchers, and lead the dissemination of research proven youth development interventions to practice and policy.  

 

Susan Edgman-Levitan, PA, is Executive Director of the John D. Stoeckle Center for Primary Care Innovation at Massachusetts General Hospital.  Prior to coming to MGH, she was the founding President of the Picker Institute. She is a Lecturer in the Department of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital and an Associate in Health Policy, Harvard Medical School.  A constant advocate of understanding the patient’s perspective on healthcare, Susan has been the co-principal investigator on the Harvard Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems Study (CAHPS) study from 1995 to the present and she is the IHI Fellow for Patient and Family-Centered Care.  She is an editor of Through the Patient’s Eyes, a book on creating and sustaining patient centered care, The CAHPS Improvement Guide, and has authored many papers and other publications on patient-centered care. She is a co-author of the Institute of Medicine 2006 report, The Future of Drug Safety: Promoting and Protecting the Health of the Public.    Ms. Edgman-Levitan serves on several boards and national advisory committees, including the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making, the National Patient Safety  Foundation, the National Health Services Corps Advisory Council, the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative, and is a member of the Lucian Leape Institute.

Ms. Edgman-Levitan is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the Duke University Physician Assistant program where she received the Distinguished Alumni award from the Duke Physician Assistant  Program and was inducted into the Duke University Medical Center Hall of Fame in 2004.  Ms. Edgman-Levitan was awarded the 2007 Leadership and Innovation award from the Centerfor Information Therapy.

Click here to watch our webinar interview with Ms. Edgman-Levitan, "Through the Patient's Eyes."

Joseph P. Frolkis, M.D., Ph.D. is the Director of Primary Care and Associate Chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine and Primary Care at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, responsible for 145 physicians in 13 practices around greater Boston, who see 210,000 adult visits annually, and for their performance on the critical metrics of access, quality, and cost. Working with hospital leadership, he is actively involved in preparing the Primary Care enterprise for the emerging implications of the Affordable Care Act, including the movement toward patient-centered, team-based care, and the profound structural and functional changes inherent in value-driven systems like Accountable Care Organizations.

Dr. Frolkis received a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Boston University in 1976, and an M.D. from Case Western Reserve University in 1980. He was Chief of Primary Care at the Mt. Sinai Medical Center in Cleveland, Clinical Director of Preventive Cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, and Chief of the Division of General Medicine, Geriatrics, and Health Care Research at University Hospitals of Cleveland and Case Medical School. Before joining Brigham and Women’s in 2009, he was President and Chief Executive Officer of New Milford Hospital in Connecticut, part of the New York-Presbyterian Health Care System. His research activities have focused on the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease, and on both patient and physician non-adherence with evidence-based treatment guidelines. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and the American Heart Association.

Kevin Grumbach, MD is Professor and Chair of the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and Chief of Family and Community Medicine at San Francisco General Hospital. He is the Director of the UCSF Center for California Health Workforce Studies, Co-Director of the UCSF Center for Excellence in Primary Care, and Co-Director of the Community Engagement and Health Policy Program for the UCSF Clinical and Translational Science Institute. His research on topics such as primary care physician supply and access to care, innovations in the delivery of primary care, and racial and ethnic diversity in the health professions have been published in major medical journals such as The New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA and cited widely in both health policy forums and the general media. With Tom Bodenheimer, he co-authored the best-selling textbook on health policy, Understanding Health Policy - A Clinical Approach, and the book, Improving Primary Care – Strategies and Tools for a Better Practice, published by McGraw Hill. He received a Generalist Physician Faculty Scholar award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Health Resources and Services Administration Award for Health Workforce Research on Diversity, and the Richard E. Cone Award for Excellence and Leadership in Cultivating Community Partnerships in Higher Education, and is a member of the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences.
 
Dr. Grumbach has served as a campaign surrogate and member of the health policy advisory committee for the Barack Obama presidential campaign, an advisor to President-Elect Obama’s health transition team, and an advisor to Congressional Committees and government agencies on primary care and health reform. He practices family medicine at the Family Health Ctr at San Francisco General Hospital.

Dr. Paul Grundy is one of only 38 IBMers and the only physician selected into IBM’s senior industry leadership forum know as the IBM Industry Academy.  Though he was born in Rhode Island, Paul’s first language was Creole, which he learned growing up in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Founded with the help of his Quaker ancestors, Freetown was the home, for a time, of Paul’s parents and grandparents.

Graduating as valedictorian from the Southern California College, he earned an M.D. from the University of California San Francisco medical school and a Masters of Public Health from the University of California Berkeley.

An active social entrepreneur and speaker on global healthcare transformation, Dr. Grundy now concentrates his efforts on driving comprehensive, linked and integrated healthcare. His work has been covered by the New York Times, BusinessWeek, Health Affairs, The Economist, The New England Journal of Medicine and other newspapers, radio and television stations across the country. “I really became an IBMer because it gave the best platform in the world to use the tools of information technology and data to do for the doctor’s mind what x-ray has done for their vision,” he says.

Prior to joining IBM, Dr. Grundy worked as a senior diplomat in the U.S. State Department supporting the intersection of health and diplomacy. He was also the medical director for the International SOS, the world’s largest medical assistance company and for Adventist Health Systems, the second-largest not-for-profit medical system in the world.

Dr. Grundy is the president of the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative and is an adjunct professor at the University of Utah’s Department of Family and Preventive Medicine.

He was made an honorary member of the American Academy of Family Physicians, and has been awarded three Department of State Superior Honor Awards and four Department of State Meritorious Service Awards. While in the U.S. Air Force, Paul received the Defense Superior Service Award and The Defense Meritorious Service Medal.  Dr. Grundy was recently honored with an NCQA Health Quality Award.

Watch our webinar interview with Dr. Grundy, "The Business of Innovation."

A successful Internet entrepreneur and business leader,  Kevin Krim was recently named CNBC’s new Digital General Manager. Kevin was most recently the global head of Bloomberg Digital, where he was responsible for Bloomberg.com, BusinessWeek.com as well as the integration of the company’s television, radio, news and data content into new digital products targeted at business leaders. His organization also developed advertising and subscription solutions for Bloomberg’s U.S. based and international online media properties which include the Japanese language site Bloomberg.co.jp.  He joined Bloomberg in 2009.

Before joining Bloomberg, Mr. Krim served as vice president of product and strategy for Yahoo! HotJobs and Yahoo! Small Business, both of which were top five businesses for Yahoo! globally. Prior to joining Yahoo! in 2006, he served as general manager of LiveJournal.com, a global social network and blogging community. Previously he was vice president for web properties at LookSmart Ltd., which acquired a start-up, Zeal.com, which he co-founded.

Mr. Krim earned an A.B. from Harvard College before starting his career as a consultant with McKinsey & Company. He lives in New York City with his family.

Congressman Jim McDermott  (Washington District 7) is serving his twelfth term in the U.S. House of Representatives.  As a practicing psychiatrist for more than three decades, McDermott’s patients have included U.S. soldiers, residents of the King County jail, and State Department employees serving in sub-Saharan Africa.  Before being elected to Congress, McDermott served in the Washington State Legislature where he crafted the Washington Basic Health Plan – the first state program in the country to provide low-cost health insurance to the unemployed and working poor.  

 McDermott worked on the Affordable Care Act of 2010 and remains committed to establishing a quality, universal health care system.  McDermott is currently leading the effort to encourage more doctors to become primary care physicians, which would lower costs and improve patient outcomes. Fighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic has been another priority of McDermott’s since he arrived in Congress in 1989.  In addition to securing the passage of the Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA) program in 1990, McDermott also founded and has co-chaired the Congressional HIV/AIDS Caucus since 1992. 

Dr. Arnold Milstein is a Professor of Medicine at Stanford and directs the Stanford Clinical Excellence Research Center. The Center is a collaboration of the Schools of Medicine, Engineering and Business to design and test new health care delivery models that both lower per capita health care spending and improve clinical outcomes.  Dr. Milstein's  career and ongoing research is focused on acceleration of clinical service innovations that improve the societal value of health care. 
 
Dr. Milstein serves as the Medical Director of the Pacific Business Group on Health (PBGH), the largest regional health care improvement coalition in the U.S.  He also guides employer-sponsored clinically-based innovation development for Mercer Health and Benefits and chairs the Steering Committee that directs the largest U.S. physician pay-for-performance program, operated by the Integrated Healthcare Association.  Previously he co-founded the Leapfrog Group and Consumer-Purchaser Disclosure Project, and served as a Congressionally-appointed MedPAC Commissioner. 

Citing his nationally distinguished innovation in health care cost reduction and quality gains, he was selected for the highest annual award of the National Business Group on Health (NBGH) and of the American College of Medical Quality.  Elected to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Sciences, he chaired the planning committee of its examination of best methods to lower per capita health care spending and improve clinical outcomes.  Dr. Milstein was educated at Harvard (BA‑Economics), Tufts (MD) and UC‑Berkeley (MPH‑Health Services Evaluation and Planning).

Dr. Christine Sinsky is a general internist at Medical Associates Clinic and Health Plans, in Dubuque, Iowa.  She is board certified in internal medicine and her practice has been recognized as a level 3 Patient Centered Medical Home since 2008.
 
Dr. Sinsky serves on the executive committee of the Board of Directors of the American Board of Internal Medicine Board. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Patient Safety and Health Information Technology.  She also serves on the physician advisory panel for the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) physician recognition programs, is a member of the Society of General Internal Medicine’s Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH) working group, and is a consultant for the John D. Stoeckle Center for Primary Care Innovation at the Massachusetts General Hospital.  
 
A frequent invited lecturer on practice innovation, redesign and the PCMH, Dr. Sinsky has presented to groups including the American College of Physicians, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and the Patient Centered Primary Care Collaborative, as well as to private and academic medical centers.
 
Dr. Sinsky received her bachelor’s and medical degrees from the University of Wisconsin and completed her post-graduate residency at Gundersen Medical Foundation/La Crosse Lutheran Hospital, in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, where she served as Chief Medical Resident. 

Read Dr. Sinsky's Progress Notes interview on Collaboration in the Face of a Workforce Shortage.

Virginia Tilden, PhD, RN is Dean Emerita of nursing at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska and Professor Emerita at the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) in Portland, Oregon. Prior to her deanship at UNMC (2003 to 2011) she was Associate Dean for Research at OHSU School of Nursing and a founding Associate Director of the University’s Center for Ethics in Health Care.  In addition to her academic leadership, she is a psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner.
 
Dr. Tilden is active nationally in organizations that promote interprofessional education and other interprofessional strategies to improve quality in health care. She serves on task forces and advisory boards of the American Academy of Nursing, the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation, the American College of Physicians, the Society for General Internal Medicine, and C-TAC – the Coalition to Transform Advanced Care. For the past 25 years she has had continuous research funding from NIH and other national funding agencies on strategies to improve end-of-life care, with specific focus on improving advanced planning for treatment decisions.

Lisa Whittemore graduated from Smith College School for Social Work with a concentration in clinical social work.  For fifteen years, she worked as a clinical social worker in a variety of settings.  While at Emerson Hospital, she developed a program within the Emergency Department to ensure that patients who presented with psychiatric and addictions issues received timely and appropriate care.  This program utilized a multi-disciplinary team, improved patient’s experience with psychiatric service within the ED, and decreased hospital utilization.  This job led to an interest in health policy issues, and she was able to pursue a Masters in Public Health (with a concentration in Health Care Management) from the Harvard School of Public Health. 
 
In January 1997, she made a major career shift and became the first Executive Director of the Emerson Hospital Physician-Hospital Organization.  This 250+ member physician/hospital group is affiliated with a large integrated delivery service network in the Boston area.  As Executive Director, she worked with physicians to implement processes to ensure that patients received appropriate care while managing the financial risk.
 
After three years in that role, Lisa was appointed the COO of Fenway Community Health.  During her tenure at Fenway Community Health, Lisa led the organization in its first JCAHO accreditation and assisted the organization in improving its financial performance.  In March of 2005, Lisa left Fenway to workthe Brigham & Women’s Hospital as the Senior Administrator for Primary Care.  As the lead administrative person for primary care, Lisa is responsible for the leadership of 15 practice locations, including our two licensed health centers.  In the spring of 2008, Lisa was named the Executive Director for Licensed and Affiliated Health Centers.  In this role, Lisa works with senior leadership within the organization to develop strategy and maximize our affiliations among our affiliated health centers.  As Partners is developing a Primary Care strategy, Lisa has been asked to co-lead that effort for the system.  For the last several years, she has been spending about half her time thinking through how to transform the health delivery system towards Patient Centered Medical Homes.