David Blumenthal M.D., former National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, has been named the incoming president of The Commonwealth Fund, the New York City-based private healthcare non-profit foundation. Dr. Blumenthal will succeed current president, Karen Davis on the first day of 2013. In addition, Blumenthal has been named a Chair of The Commonwealth Fund’s Board of Director along with Samuel O. Thier, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and chief health information and innovation officer at Partners Healthcare System in Boston
“We are extremely fortunate to have Dr. Blumenthal take the helm of the Fund at a crucial time in the drive to achieve a high performance health system. If the U.S. is to realize the triple aims of better health, better care, and lower cost, it will need over the next 10 years unstinting efforts by health policy and practice leaders like Dr. Blumenthal. He is ideally suited to carry forward The Commonwealth Fund’s significant role in advancing delivery and payment system changes that will improve system performance,” Commonwealth Fund board chairman James R. Tallon, Jr., said in a statement.
Blumenthal was the National Coordinator from 2009 to 2011, when he stepped down, and was subsequently replaced by Farzad Mostashari, M.D. Even before his time as National Coordinator where he oversaw the implementation of place one of the largest publicly funded infrastructure investments in the U.S. to build an interoperable, private nationwide health information system, he had been a champion for health IT in other ventures.
This includes his time as a practicing primary care physician; director of the Institute for Health Policy; and professor of medicine and health policy at Massachusetts General Hospital/Partners Healthcare System and Harvard Medical School. He’s also authored more than 250 books, is a Institute of Medicine member and a former board member and national correspondent for the New England Journal of Medicine, among other achievements.
“In leading the Commonwealth Fund, my aim will be to honor Karen’s leadership by ensuring that we continue to contribute significantly to the breakthroughs in performance that are needed to make our health system sustainable,” Blumenthal said in a statement.
