Jeffrey C. (Jeff) Bauer, Ph.D., a nationally recognized health futurist and medical economist, is a Chicago-based management consulting partner at Affiliated Computer Services, Inc. (ACS). As leader of the futures practice for ACS Healthcare Solutions, he forecasts the future of health care and describes practical, creative approaches to improving the delivery system.
Dr. Bauer has published more than 160 articles, books, Web pages, and videos on health care delivery. He speaks frequently to national and international audiences about key trends in health care, medical science, technology, information systems, reimbursement, public policy, health reform, and creative problem-solving. Dr. Bauer is quoted often in the national press and writes regularly for professional journals that cover the business of health care.
As a consultant, he assists health care provider organizations with leadership education, strategic planning, technology assessment, and service line transformation. He has recently facilitated an expert task force on the future of selected specialties for one of the nation’s largest medical associations, managed technology assessment for a 28-hospital health system, analyzed performance of selected clinical service lines, and developed strategic plans for hospitals and professional associations.
He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Colorado-Boulder. He graduated from Colorado College in Colorado Springs with a B.A. in economics and completed a certificate in political studies at the University of Paris (France). During his academic career, he was a Boettcher Scholar, a Ford Foundation Independent Scholar, a Fulbright Scholar (Switzerland), and a Kellogg Foundation National Fellow.
Barbara Glanz, one of fewer than 550 Certified Speaking Professionals worldwide, works with organizations that want to improve morale, retention, and service and with people who want to rediscover the joy in their work and in their lives. Using her Master's degree in Adult Learning, she has spoken on all 7 continents and in all 50 states to organizations as diverse as Nordstrom, Honda, KFC, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Southwest Airlines, Bank of America, Kaiser Permanente, Hallmark, the US Dept. of Energy, Shangri-La Hotels, Merry Maids, Verizon, and the Singapore Security Police!
She is the author of eleven books, including The Simple Truths of Service—Inspired by Johnny the Bagger (co-authored with Ken Blanchard); The Simple Truths of appreciation; Handle with CARE - Motivating & Retaining Employees; What Can I Do? Ideas to Help Those Who Have Experienced Loss; Balancing Acts; CARE Packages for the Workplace; CARE Packages for the Home; and CARE Packages for your Customers. Known as the business speaker who speaks to your heart as well as to your head, she lives and breathes her personal motto, "Spreading Contagious Enthusiasm™." She lives on the beach in Sarasota, Florida, and adores her grandchildren, Gavin, Kinsey, Owen, and Simon.
Jeanette Michalak, RN, MSN is responsible for the coordination and provision of consultative services in the areas of assessment, education and initiative development for Planetree affiliates as they develop patient centered care within their existing organizational framework. Prior to joining Planetree, Jeanette spent over 30 years in nursing in the roles of critical care nurse clinician, educator, director and administrator. As Director of Planetree Services at a community hospital in Ohio, Jeanette guided the process of culture change including the creation of a new hospital built on patient centered concepts.
Dr. Rosemary Sokas received her M.D. from Boston University School of Medicine, her M.Sc. and M.Occ.H. from the Harvard School of Public Health, and is board certified in occupational medicine and in internal medicine. She previously directed OOM from 1997 to 1999, and returned to this position in November, 2008 after a hiatus spent serving as the Associate Director for Science at NIOSH and subsequently as tenured professor and director of the Division of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she established and directed the Illinois Public Health Research Fellowship Program.
Dr. Sokas previously served on faculty at the University of Pennsylvania and at George Washington University, and delivered clinical care in migrant and community health centers and in the VA. Her research publications evaluate the impact of occupational exposures on common health outcomes, training intervention effectiveness in health care and in construction, and novel approaches to addressing the needs of immigrant, high-risk and low-income workers.
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 Lynne and Marc Benioff 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, served as the first elected president of the Society of Hospital Medicine, and edits the field’s main textbook. He is generally considered 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 (http://webmm.ahrq.gov), a case-based patient safety journal on the Web, and AHRQ Patient Safety Network (http://psnet.ahrq.gov), 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). Dr. Wachter has discussed patient safety and quality on Good Morning America, PBS’s NewsHour, Imus in the Morning, CNN’s American Morning, 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. In 2008, Modern Healthcare magazine named him the 19th most influential physician-executive in the United States (the most highly placed academic physician on the list). He is a member of the Board of Directors of the American Board of Internal Medicine and is on the healthcare advisory boards of several companies, including Google. His blog, www.wachtersworld.org, is one of the nation’s most popular healthcare blogs.