Joel Kupersmith, M.D., an American physician, is the former dean of the Texas Tech University School of Medicine, and head of the Office of Research and Development of the Department of Veterans Affairs. He is the former director, Veterans Initiatives and professor of medicine at Georgetown University.
Kupersmith was born in New York City and graduated from the Bronx High School of Science, Union College in Schenectady, New York and New York Medical College. After serving as a lieutenant (MC) in the U.S. Navy, and residency in internal medicine at New York Medical College he completed his cardiology fellowship at Beth Israel Medical Center/Harvard Medical School.
Kupersmith's research interests, which began when he was a research associate in pharmacology at Columbia University's College of Physician Surgeons have included basic and clinical electrophysiology and heart rhythm abnormalities. They focused on the unique effects of antiarrhythmic drugs in ischemic tissue, ion sensitive electrodes to understand the heart's electrical activity, [1] [2] and cost-effectiveness in heart disease. He has published over 170 papers. [3]
Kupersmith joined the faculty of the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in 1974, where he rose to the rank of professor and initiated one of the early clinical cardiac electrophysiology sections and a clinical pharmacology section.
Kupersmith then became chief of cardiology and Cooke Professor of Medicine at the University of Louisville, and professor and chairperson of the department of medicine at Michigan State University. In 1997, he was appointed dean of the School of Medicine at Texas Tech University and of its Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Vice President for clinical affairs, and CEO of its faculty practice. [4] He was involved in the initial efforts to establish what is now the Paul L. Foster School of Medicine in El Paso and initiated a 4/year MD/MBA program, the second in the U.S. [5]
Kupersmith has served as a site visit chair for the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), was a member of the AAMC Task Force on Fraud and Abuse, and was elected to the Governing Council, Medical School Section, of the American Medical Association.
Following his tenure at Texas Tech, Kupersmith was a Petersdorf scholar at the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) and scholar-in-residence at the Institute of Medicine (now the National Academy of Medicine). Here, he led a project [6] [7] on how to fund and oversee Comparative Effectiveness Research which resulted in a recommendation of a public-private consortium to engage all relevant stakeholders in establishing priorities, funding research, and balancing competing interests, ideas which were later the prototype for the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute.
In 2005, Kupersmith was appointed CRADO, Office of Research and Development (ORD) [8] within the Veterans Health Administration beginning an 8-year tenure. He started the Million Veterans Program which has a goal of collecting genetic information from veterans and linking that information to the VA electronic health record. It has become one of the world's largest genetic databases. [9] [10] [11]
Dr. Kupersmith also implemented laboratory infrastructure improvement and new methods of developing and conducting research, mandating engagement of health system leaders thus assuring its relevance. [12] He initiated one of the early Central Institutional Review Boards and established a VA young investigator award with Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
A component of the Office of Research and Development, (the Clinical Research Pharmacy Coordinating Center) won the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. [13]
Kupersmith was the former director, Veterans Initiatives and professor of medicine, Georgetown University. In this capacity, working with Gen. (Ret) George Casey, former Army Chief of Staff, he initiated the Veterans Creed, [14] [15] a statement of veteran's principles, and organized 17 major Veterans Service Organizations to adopt and utilize it. [16] [17] In this position, He has also advised ref, advised on how to make civilian health systems more receptive to veterans and other aspects of veterans’ healthcare. [18] [19]
Dr. Kupersmith was a member of Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research, [20] Council of the National Center for the Advancement of Translational Science of NI, the Federal Collaboration on Health Disparities Research, the National Science and Technology Council Committee on Homeland and National Security, The Biomarkers Consortium of NIH, and the Council on Science, Office of Science and Technology Policy, White House.
Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is "the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients. ... [It] means integrating individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research." The aim of EBM is to integrate the experience of the clinician, the values of the patient, and the best available scientific information to guide decision-making about clinical management. The term was originally used to describe an approach to teaching the practice of medicine and improving decisions by individual physicians about individual patients.
Primary care is a model of health care that supports first-contact, accessible, continuous, comprehensive and coordinated person-focused care. It aims to optimise population health and reduce disparities across the population by ensuring that subgroups have equal access to services.
The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C. that was established in 1876. It represents medical schools, teaching hospitals, and academic and scientific societies, while providing services to its member institutions that include data from medical, education, and health studies, as well as consulting. The AAMC administers the Medical College Admission Test and operates the American Medical College Application Service and the Electronic Residency Application Service. Along with the American Medical Association (AMA), the AAMC co-sponsors the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), the accrediting body for all U.S. MD-granting medical education programs.
The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is the component of the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) led by the Under Secretary of Veterans Affairs for Health that implements the healthcare program of the VA through a nationalized healthcare service in the United States, providing healthcare and healthcare-adjacent services to veterans through the administration and operation of 146 VA Medical Centers (VAMC) with integrated outpatient clinics, 772 Community Based Outpatient Clinics (CBOC), and 134 VA Community Living Centers Programs. It is the largest division in the department, and second largest in the entire federal government, employing over 350,000 employees. All VA hospitals, clinics and medical centers are owned by and operated by the Department of Veterans Affairs, and all of the staff employed in VA hospitals are federal employees. Because of this, veterans that qualify for VHA healthcare do not pay premiums or deductibles for their healthcare but may have to make copayments depending on the medical procedure. VHA is not a part of the US Department of Defense Military Health System.
Interprofessional education refers to occasions when students from two or more professions in health and social care learn together during all or part of their professional training with the object of cultivating collaborative practice for providing client- or patient-centered health care.
Ralph Snyderman is a Chancellor Emeritus at Duke University, James B. Duke Professor of Medicine, and Executive Director of the Duke Center for Personalized Health Care. He served as chancellor for health affairs and dean of the School of Medicine from 1989 to July 2004. Under his leadership, Duke University created the Duke University Health System (DUHS) to develop and operate a comprehensive health delivery system, and he was its founding President and Chief Executive Officer. DUHS, with its practice networks, ambulatory care centers, home health services, community hospitals, university hospital, and satellite collaborations demonstrated the power of academic medicine to deliver the best of care to broad communities. Snyderman helped lead the creation of the largest academic clinical research organization worldwide. During his tenure, Duke University Hospital was ranked 6th overall in the nation and its medical school ranked 4th. Snyderman is a leader in the conception and development of personalized health care, an evolving model of national health care delivery. He has articulated the need to move the current focus of health care from the treatment of disease-events to personalized, predictive, preventive, and participatory care that is focused on the patient. As Senior Vice-President at Genentech, he led the development of powerful new molecular biology therapeutics. Ralph Snyderman was the recipient of the 2012 David E. Rogers Award from the Association of American Medical Colleges which recognized him as "The Father of Personalized Medicine." He is a member of the Association of American Medical Colleges, Association of American Physicians, American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and the National Academy of Medicine.
John E. "Jack" Wennberg was an American healthcare researcher who was a pioneer of unwarranted variation in the healthcare industry. In four decades of work, Wennberg has documented the geographic variation in the healthcare that patients receive in the United States. In 1988, he founded the Center for the Evaluative Clinical Sciences at Dartmouth Medical School to address that unwarranted variation in healthcare.
Albert Siu is a Cuban American internist and geriatrician and the Ellen and Howard C. Katz Chairman and Professor of the Brookdale Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. He is also the director of the Geriatric Research, Education, and Clinical Center at the James J. Peters VA Medical Center in The Bronx, a senior associate editor of Health Services Research, a senior fellow of the Brookdale Foundation and a former trustee of the Nathan Cummings Foundation.
David M. Eddy is an American physician, mathematician, and healthcare analyst who has done seminal work in mathematical modeling of diseases, clinical practice guidelines, and evidence-based medicine. Four highlights of his career have been summarized by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences: "more than 25 years ago, Eddy wrote the seminal paper on the role of guidelines in medical decision-making, the first Markov model applied to clinical problems, and the original criteria for coverage decisions; he was the first to use and publish the term 'evidence-based'."
The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) is a United States–based non-profit institute created through the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. It is a government-sponsored organization charged with funding Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) that assists consumers, clinicians, purchasers, and policymakers to make informed decisions intended to improve health care at both the individual and population levels, according to the Institute of Medicine. Medicare considers the Institute's research in determining what sorts of therapies it will cover, although the institute's authorizing legislation set certain limits on uses of the research by federal health agencies.
Stephen L. Ondra is the chief medical adviser for the MITRE Corporation’s work as operator of the CMS Alliance to Modernize Healthcare federally funded research and development center. Ondra advises all HHS organizations to advance private insurance markets, Medicare and Medicaid, value-based payments, and healthcare quality. Ondra was most recently CEO of Cygnus-AI Inc., a company specializing in artificial intelligence and clinical decision support tools for diagnostic radiology. He was also founder and chief executive officer of North Star Health Care Consulting, and served on the board of directors of Triple-S Management and electroCore. A neurosurgeon and neuroscientist, Ondra has also served in senior positions in the Federal government, having a role in health reform efforts and the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. He advises corporations, provider organizations and early-stage start-ups on the transition to value-based care and health IT strategy.
Sachin H. Jain is an American physician who held leadership positions in the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). From 2015 to 2020, he served as president and chief executive officer of the CareMore Health System. In June 2020, it was announced that he would join the SCAN Group and Health Plan as its new president and CEO. He is also adjunct professor of medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine and a Contributor at Forbes. In 2018, he was named one of American healthcare's most 100 most influential leaders by Modern Healthcare magazine (#36).
John S. Rumsfeld is an American cardiologist. He is the Chief Innovation Officer for the American College of Cardiology, and Professor of Medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. He was previously the National Director of Cardiology for the U.S. Veterans Health Administration. Rumsfeld was named as Chief Innovation Officer for American College of Cardiology in 2015.
Todd E. Rasmussen, MD, FACS is an American professor and Vice Chair for Education in the Department of Surgery at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, and a Senior Associate Consultant in the Division of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery. Prior to joining the Mayo Clinic, he had a 28-year career in the military, retiring as an Air Force Colonel in 2021. His most recent military assignment was as Associate Dean or Research at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and an attending surgeon at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
Steven Pearson is an American physician, bioethicist, and the Founder and President of the non-profit health policy and comparative effectiveness research organization Institute for Clinical and Economic Review in Boston, MA. He conducts research on cost-effectiveness analysis and healthcare technology assessment. He is also a lecturer in Harvard's Department of Population Medicine and a member of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Comparative Effectiveness Research Steering Committee.
Elliott S. Fisher is a health policy researcher and advocate for improving health system performance in the United States. He helped develop the concept of accountable care organizations and championed their adoption by Medicare. The development of the Affordable Care Act was influenced by his research on disparities in healthcare spending and utilization across the United States. He has strongly supported a rapid transition from fee-for-service to pay-for-performance models in the U.S. healthcare industry. He is a tenured faculty member at Dartmouth College, where he teaches in the Masters in Public Health program.
The James J. Peters VA Medical Center,, is a US Department of Veterans Affairs hospital complex located at 130 West Kingsbridge Road in West Fordham, Bronx, New York City. The hospital is the headquarters of the Veterans Integrated Service Networks New York/New Jersey VA Health Care Network. This network is also the parent network to VA New York Harbor Healthcare System.
Rochelle Paula Walensky is an American physician-scientist who served as the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2021 to 2023 and served as the administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry in her capacity as the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2021 to 2023. On May 5, 2023, she announced her resignation, effective June 30, 2023. Prior to her appointment at the CDC, she had served as the chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Walensky is an expert on HIV/AIDS.
Brendan G. Carr, MD, MA, MS is an American physician and educator. He is Chief Executive Officer and Kenneth L. Davis, MD, Distinguished Chair of the Mount Sinai Health System as of 2024, and Professor and of Emergency Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the Mount Sinai Health System.
Nancy Keating is an American physician who works at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and is a professor at Harvard Medical School. Her research considers the factors that influence quality care for people suffering from cancer.
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