Robert M. Wachter, MD is Professor and Associate Chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, where he holds the nation’s first endowed chair in Hospital Medicine. He is also Chief of the Division of Hospital Medicine and Chief of the Medical Service at UCSF Medical Center.
He has published 200 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 regarded as 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, and AHRQ Patient Safety Network, the leading federal patient safety portal. Together, the sites receive over two million visitors a year.
He has written two bestselling books on patient safety: Internal Bleeding and Understanding Patient Safety. Dr. Wachter has discussed patient safety and quality on Good Morning America, PBS’s NewsHour, CBS Sunday Morning, and NPR’s Talk of the Nation, and 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. Modern Physician has named him one of the 30 most influential physician-executives in the US (he has been the highest rank academic physician for the past three years), and in 2010 Modern Healthcare named him one of the 100 most powerful people in healthcare. He is Chair-elect of the Board of the American Board of Internal Medicine and has served on the healthcare advisory boards of several companies, including Google. His blog, WachtersWorld, is one of the nation’s most popular healthcare blogs.
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