On Wednesday, President Obama appointed Dr. Don Berwick to run Medicare and Medicaid. Just to summarize Berwick’s credentials, he’s a pediatrician, clinical professor at the Harvard Medical School, former leader and advisor on a number of government councils and task forces aimed at improving the quality of healthcare, and a former Baldrige Judge.

I wrote about Berwick’s nomination on April 19^th, pointing out that the immediate past president of the American Medical Association said that he “is widely known and well respected for his visionary efforts that focus on optimizing the quality and safety of patient care.” According to USA Today, his “nomination was immediately hailed as a brilliant choice by policy experts from across the ideological spectrum.”

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid have not had a permanent administrator since October 2006. Obama nominated the perfect person to fix this problem while addressing a much bigger one: how to deliver high-quality patient care for less. Berwick’s Baldrige and healthcare background provide an unusual systems perspective for tackling an issue that is critical to the country and to all Americans.

Kudos to Obama for finding the right person and for making the recess appointment that puts him to work.

For those keeping score of Baldrige people in high positions, we now have Berwick at Medicare and Medicaid; Terry Holliday, former superintendent of Baldrige Award-winning Iredell-Statesville Schools, now commissioner of education for Kentucky; and E. David Spong, CEO of two Boeing divisions that won the Baldrige Award, now president-elect of the American Society for Quality.

Do you know of any others?

(5 votes, average: 4.20 out of 5)

 Loading ...