“I think health care is more about love than about most other things. If there isn’t at the core of these two human beings who have agreed to be in a relationship where one is trying to help relieve the suffering of another, which is love, you can’t get to the right answer here.”
—Donald Berwick, former Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
About Donald Berwick:
Donald M Berwick, known as the former administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). He started his career as a pediatrician at Harvard Community Health Plan; in 1983 he became the plan’s first Vice President of Quality-of-Care Measurement. He also co-founded Institute for Healthcare Improvement. In 2010 when he joined as the administrator of CMS, and made important findings about healthcare industry’s resource distribution. He said, “20 percent to 30 percent of health spending is ‘waste’ that yields no benefit to patients, and that some of the needless spending is a result of onerous, archaic regulations enforced by his agency.” This statement formed the basis for a lot of debate around the need of resource redistribution in healthcare. He received knighthood in 2005 for his work creating new care models in UK’s National Health Service. He has also served as vice chair of the US Preventive Services Task Force, the first “independent member” of the American Hospital Association Board of Trustees, and chair of the National Advisory Council of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
He has published over 150 articles and have co-authored a lot of books. He was awarded the Purpose Prize for “enlisting wide-scale cooperation and scientifically-proven protocols to help hospitals improve care and save more than 100,000 lives” in 2007. He is currently working as a lecturer of Health Care Policy, Department of Health Care Policy at the Harvard Medical School.
