April 22, 2010

Wachter Ranks Tenth Among Nation's Top Physician Executives

Robert Wachter

Robert M. Wachter, MD, professor and associate chair of the Department of Medicine at UCSF, was recently named the tenth most influential physician-executive in the United States by Modern Physician magazine.

Readers voted for one of 100 physician executives who made up the final ballot, with the 50 physicians who received the most votes making the final list. The ranking was determined by the number of votes received.

Wachter’s tenth-place ranking puts him in good company. Others in the top ten include the national coordinator of the health information technology office, the directors of the Food and Drug Administration, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Joint Commission and the US Surgeon General – all individuals controlling large national organizations. In fact, Wachter’s ranking at number 10 marks him as the most influential academic physician in the country for the third consecutive year.

A national leader in the fields of patient safety and health care quality, Wachter wears many hats at UCSF. He is professor and chief of the Division of Hospital Medicine at UCSF, where he holds the Lynne and Marc Benioff Endowed Chair in Hospital Medicine and serves as chief of the Medical Service at UCSF Medical Center.

This is Wachter’s fourth time in the top 50 of the nation’s top physician executives. His previous high point was No. 19 in 2008.

Wacther has published more than 200 articles and six 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 “father” of the hospitalist field, the fastest growing specialty in the history of modern medicine.

Wachter is editor of AHRQ WebM&M, a case-based patient safety journal on the web, and AHRQ Patient Safety Network (PSNet), the leading federal patient safety portal. Together, the sites receive nearly two million visitors a year.

He has written two bestselling books on patient safety: Internal Bleeding: The Truth Behind America’s Terrifying Epidemic of Medical Mistakes (Rugged Land, 2004), and Understanding Patient Safety (McGraw-Hill, 2008).

Wachter is widely sought out by the media. He has discussed patient safety and quality on “Good Morning America”, PBS’s “NewsHour,” and NPR’s “Talk of the Nation,” and has been quoted in virtually every major newspaper and newsmagazine.

He received one of the 2004 John M. Eisenberg Awards, the nation’s top honor in patient safety. Wachter is a member of the Board of Directors of the American Board of Internal Medicine and has served on the health care advisory boards of several companies, including Google and Epocrates. His blog, Wachter’s World, is one of the nation’s most popular health care blogs.

For the full list, go to Modern Physician website.

Photo by Noah Berger

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