Speaker Biographies

Donald E. Casey Jr., M.D., is the chief medical officer and vice president for quality of Atlantic Health System (AHS), a three-hospital system that includes Morristown Memorial, Overlook and Mountainside Hospitals, all located in northern New Jersey. His current responsibilities include leading and overseeing AHS’s initiatives for quality and patient safety, physician leadership development, academic affairs, and clinical research. In addition, he represents AHS to a number of quality-related organizations, including the National Quality Forum, the New Jersey Council on Teaching Hospitals, and the New Jersey Hospital Association. In addition to his responsibilities at AHS, Dr. Casey is also active at the national level in many quality-related activities, including the development of clinical practice guidelines, quality performance measurements, and implementation strategies for these initiatives, especially through the use of information technology, professional standards, and incentives. He has also authored a chapter on outcomes measurement in The Quality Solution: The Stakeholder’s Guide to Improving Healthcare, edited by David Nash.

Elliott S. Fisher, M.D., is a professor of medicine and community and family medicine at the Dartmouth Medical School and the Center for the Evaluative Clinical Sciences. He continues to work as a general internist at the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in White River Junction, Vermont, where he also codirects the VA Outcomes Group, a health services research and fellowship training program. At Dartmouth, Dr. Fisher teaches in the clinical evaluative sciences master’s program and helps produce the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care. His research focuses on the causes of geographic variations in medical practice and the consequences of these variations for health and health care. Dr. Fisher has served on several Institute of Medicine committees and recently completed a term on the National Advisory Council of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. He has published broadly on issues of health care outcomes, quality and costs in numerous journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and Health Affairs.

Robert M. Krughoff is founder and president of Consumers’ Checkbook and the Center for the Study of Services, an independent, nonprofit consumer organization founded in 1974. The organization publishes local versions of Consumers’ Checkbook magazine in seven major metropolitan areas. The magazine evaluates local service firms such as hospitals, auto repair shops, and banks. The center has also has developed the Consumers’ Guide to Hospitals, Guide to Health Plans for Federal Employees, and other materials and services for consumers. Before founding the Center for the Study of Services, Mr. Krughoff served in the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (now the Department of Health and Human Services) as director of the Office of Research and Evaluation Planning and as special assistant to the assistant secretary for planning and evaluation. He currently serves on the board of directors of the Consumer Federation of America and has served on the board of directors of Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports magazine. He chairs the Technology Assessment Advisory Committee for the ECRI Institute.

The Honorable Michael Leavitt was sworn in as the twentieth secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on January 26, 2005. As secretary, he leads the nation’s efforts to protect the health of all Americans and provide essential human services to those in need. He manages one of the largest civilian departments in the federal government, with a budget that accounts for almost one out of every four federal dollars and more than 67,000 employees. During his first year, Secretary Leavitt led efforts to successfully enroll tens of millions of seniors and disabled persons in the new Medicare prescription drug benefit, mobilized the nation’s pandemic preparedness, accelerated the development of health information standards, and oversaw the medical response to Hurricane Katrina. He presided over changes in Medicaid statutes to give states flexibility to provide targeted insurance coverage to more people, and worked toward the reauthorization by Congress—after ten extensions—of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. He is focused on making health care more transparent in quality and price, and on reducing the time and expense of bringing safe and effective drugs to market. Prior to his current service, Secretary Leavitt served as head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and was a three-term governor of Utah. During his eleven years as governor, Utah was recognized six times as one of America’s best-managed states. He was chosen by his peers as chairman of the National Governors Association, Western Governors Association, and Republican Governors Association. Prior to his public service, he served as president and chief executive officer of a regional insurance firm, establishing it as one of the top insurance brokers in America.

Arnold Milstein, M.D., is the medical director at the Pacific Business Group on Health  and the national health care thought leader at William M. Mercer. His work focuses on improving managed care programs for large purchasers and government. Dr. Milstein’s thirty book chapters and published articles have centered on managed care program design. A member of NCQA’s national committee to develop HEDIS and the Performance Measures Coordinating Committee, Business Insurance magazine selected him as one of the twenty people who has made a difference in employee benefits management over the past two decades. Last year’s New England Journal of Medicine's series on employer sponsored health insurance described him as a “pioneer” in employer efforts to advance quality. In October 2006, Dr. Milstein was elected to the Institute of Medicine. Since January 2002, he has also served on the Strategic Advisory Council of the National Quality Forum.

Steven D. Pearson, M.D., is a senior fellow at America’s Health Insurance Plans and president of the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review at Harvard Medical School, which he founded in 2006 to appraise the clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of medical innovations, with the goal of providing trustworthy information to decision-makers to improve the value of health care services. Dr. Pearson’s work examines the scientific and ethical foundations of evidence-based policymaking in health care. He serves on the management committee of the International Society for Priority Setting in Health Care, and was selected as vice chair of the Medicare Evidence and Coverage Advisory Committee in 2007. In 2004, Dr. Pearson was awarded an Atlantic Fellowship to pursue policy studies at the National Institute for Clinical Excellence in London. He returned to the United States to serve from 2005 to 2006 as special advisor for technology and coverage policy at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.  His published work includes the book No Margin, No Mission: Health Care Organizations and the Quest for Ethical Excellence (Oxford University Press, 2003)
 
Earl P. Steinberg, M.D., is a nationally known expert in evaluation and improvement of the quality and efficiency of health care. He currently is president and CEO of Resolution Health Inc. (RHI), a leading health care data analysis company that provides innovative quality improvement and cost reduction services to health plans, employers, PBMs, and disease management companies. Dr. Steinberg also is a member of Blue Cross/Blue Shield Association’s National Medical Advisory Panel, an adjunct professor of medicine and health policy and management at Johns Hopkins University, and a member of the advisory council of Harvard Medical School’s Department of Health Care Policy. Prior to joining RHI, Dr. Steinberg spent six years as vice president of Covance Health Economics and Outcomes Services Inc., director of its Quality Assessment and Improvement Systems Division, and codirector of its Outcomes Studies Group. He previously worked at Johns Hopkins University, where he was professor of medicine and of health policy and management and director of the Johns Hopkins Program for Medical Technology and Practice Assessment, and at the Federal Physician Payment Review Commission.

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