Skip to contents
In This Issue:
Five BWHers are among this year’s “Champions in Health Care,” awarded annually by The Boston Business Journal to honor the best and brightest professionals in the Bay State’s world-class health care industry.
“This recognition speaks volumes about the passion and commitment of our staff not only to patients, but also to our focus on the quality of service for all the communities we serve,” said BWH President Betsy Nabel, MD. “It’s a tremendous honor for five of our people to receive this recognition in a city renowned for its leadership and excellence in health care.”
The Boston Business Journal bestows awards in seven categories. This year, BWH is represented in five.
Howard Hiatt, MD, associate chief and co-founder of the Division of Global Health Equity, received a Lifetime Achievement Award for his indelible contributions to health care. During a career that spans more than a half a century, Hiatt has made transformative contributions stretching across the entire spectrum of health care, from public health and molecular biology to patient safety and the education of generations of physicians in training. BWH’s Division of Global Health Equity, which Hiatt helped launch, is a pioneer among programs for training young clinicians in the area of health inequities around the world. Hiatt also was part of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War team that received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985, and he was a member of the team that discovered messenger RNA.
Michael Gustafson, MD, MBA, senior vice president of Clinical Excellence, was an honoree in the administrator category. Gustafson has spearheaded many critical and innovative initiatives that have created a culture of quality, excellence, safety and transparency at BWH. He oversees teams that are responsible for dozens of safety initiatives, service excellence projects and numerous reporting, analysis, benchmarking and planning programs. For the last decade, Gustafson has championed the BWF Balanced Scorecard, which translates the organization’s mission, strategy and goals into a comprehensive set of performance measures. Most recently, Gustafson is leading strategies within BW/F and Partners for more widespread adoption of process improvement and for building manager and front-line staff improvement and change management skills.
An Innovator Award went to William Churchill, MS, RPh, executive director of Pharmacy Services. Churchill has established the pharmacy at BWH as a national leader in the use of technology to improve medication safety, efficiency and research, while driving down medication costs at a time when the debate rages over the cost of health care. Churchill recently added a trio of medication preparation robots to the pharmacy team, an innovation that builds on the pharmacy’s track record for dramatically increasing safety and efficiency.
In the nursing category, Patrice Nicholas, DNSc, MPH, RN, ANP, FAAN, director of Global Health and Academic Partnerships, in the Center for Nursing Excellence, was recognized for her research and teaching about quality of life issues in chronic illness, particularly HIV/AIDS and international/cross-cultural work. She has authored more than 80 peer-reviewed research and clinical manuscripts, texts, chapters and monographs related to nursing, health care and global health. She is an associate clinical scientist at the Cantor Center of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and is a visiting professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, the University of Swaziland, St. Luke’s Hospital in Tokyo and Catholic University in Belgium. Nicholas is also a professor in the School of Nursing at the MGH Institute of Health Professions.
In the physician category, Michael VanRooyen, MD, MPH, director of both the Division of International Health and Humanitarian Programs and the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, was honored for his contribution to the practice of medicine. VanRooyen’s unique ability to apply scientific methodology to improve relief efforts in massive humanitarian crises has established him as one of the world’s authorities on humanitarian health issues, war, disaster and displacement. He has worked in more than 30 conflict zones and disaster settings internationally with numerous relief agencies and has been has been a special advisor for the World Health Organization, the Institute of Medicine and several United Nations agencies. After the Haiti earthquake, he assembled a team of HHI physicians who organized a large post-surgical recovery and rehabilitation hospital on the island.
In addition to the BWH recipients, John Glaser, who served as vice president and chief information officer of Partners HealthCare, was honored in the administrator category for his commitment to advance the use of technology to improve patient care and clinical outcomes. Prior to his position at Partners, he was chief information officer at BWH during the introduction of the computerized provider order entry system (CPOE). Glaser left his post at Partners in August to become chief executive officer of Siemens Health Services.