Medicine Grand Rounds: Dr. J. Michael McWilliams presents “Harnessing Professionalism: The Forgotten Frontier of Quality Improvement?”

Michael McWilliams, MD, PhD is the Warren Alpert Foundation Professor of Health Care Policy, a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and a general internist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. His research spans questions related to health care spending, quality, and access, with an overarching goal of informing policies that support efficiency and equity in health care. His work has focused on 4 areas: 1) the design and effects of payment systems, 2) the organization and quality of health care delivery, 3) effects of health insurance coverage, and 4) quasi-experimental methods for causal inference in observational research. He is currently principal investigator of a Program Project (P01) on the Medicare program funded by the National Institute on Aging. In this and other research supported by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Commonwealth Fund, and Arnold Ventures, he is examining a range of topics, including Medicare Advantage, the design of population-based payment models, risk adjustment, provider consolidation, and strategies for leveraging professionalism more productively in health care.

Dr. McWilliams serves as a Senior Advisor to the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation and a member of the board of directors for the Institute for Accountable Care. He is also an Associate Editor for JAMA Internal Medicine and a member of the editorial boards for Health Services Research and the American Journal of Managed Care. His work has earned several honors, including the AcademyHealth HSR Impact Award, investigator awards from AcademyHealth and the Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM), and distinctions for specific papers from AcademyHealth, SGIM, the National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation, Health Affairs and NEJM Catalyst. Dr. McWilliams received his BS with highest distinction in biology as a Morehead Scholar from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, his MD magna cum laude from Harvard Medical School, and his PhD in Health Policy from Harvard University. He completed his residency in general internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.