Washington, DC - The National Quality Forum (NQF) has elected five new members to its Board of Directors.
The NQF Board of Directors guides NQF on strategic and policy issues. The Board is composed of 31 voting members - key public- and private- sector leaders who represent major stakeholders in America’s healthcare system. Consumers and those who purchase healthcare hold a simple majority of the at-large seats.
“Each of our new board members brings with them extensive and varied experience across all avenues of health and healthcare. Their collective leadership is essential as NQF strives to serve the public good in pursuit of better, more affordable care and better health,” said William L. Roper, MD, MPH, NQF Board chair.
The newly elected members include:
Jack Cochran, MD, FACS, is the Executive Director of The Permanente Federation, headquartered in Oakland, California. Prior to Dr. Cochran’s appointment to The Permanente Federation in October 2007, he served as Executive Medical Director, President, and Chairman of the Board of the Colorado Permanente Medical Group (CPMG) for Kaiser Permanente. Dr. Cochran serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the Alliance of Community Health Plans and the UCSF Global Health Group Advisory Board. He has actively participated in implementing many of the priorities called for in health reform, including Kaiser Permanente’s electronic health record, the largest successful private clinical information systems deployment in the world.
Joyce Dubow is the Senior Health Care Reform Director in AARP’s Office of the Executive Vice-President for Policy and Strategy. Ms. Dubow was the first chair of the Consensus Standards Approval Committee (CSAC) of the National Quality Forum, and is currently co-chair of the NQF Patient-Reported Outcomes Expert Panel. Ms. Dubow is also a member of the Coordinating Committee of the Measure Applications Partnership; the National Priorities Partnership; the National Committee for Quality Assurance’s Committee on Physician Programs and its Measurement Panel on Geriatrics; the National Advisory Committee for Aligning Forces for Quality of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; the National Committee on Evidence-based Benefit Design of the National Business Group on Health; the National Heart Lung Blood Institute Cardiovascular Disease Clinical Guideline Expert Panel; the Board of Directors of the Nursing Alliance for Quality Care; the Board of Directors of the Informed Patient Institute; and the Steering Committee of the AQA Alliance.
Bill Kramer is the Executive Director for National Health Policy at the Pacific Business Group on Health (PBGH). In this role, Mr. Kramer leads PBGH’s work at the federal and state level to advance policy in ways that improve health care quality and reduce costs. Mr. Kramer also serves as Project Director for the Consumer-Purchaser Disclosure Project, a collaborative led by PBGH and the National Partnership for Women & Families to improve the quality and affordability of health care.
Mr. Kramer serves on the National Priorities Partnership, the Measure Applications Partnership Coordinating Committee, and the AQA Alliance Steering Group. Immediately prior to taking his position at PBGH, Mr. Kramer led his own consulting practice in which he provided policy analysis, strategic guidance, and technical assistance on health reform issues in Oregon and at the national level. Prior to developing his consulting practice, Mr. Kramer was a senior executive with Kaiser Permanente for over 20 years--most recently as Chief Financial Officer for Kaiser Permanente's Northwest Region.
Elizabeth Mitchell serves as CEO of the Maine Health Management Coalition, an employer-led, multi-stakeholder coalition whose mission is to improve the value of healthcare services. Ms. Mitchell also serves as the CEO of the Maine Health Management Coalition Foundation which is dedicated to performance measurement and public reporting and engaging the public in the use of cost and quality information.
Ms. Mitchell serves on the Board of the National Business Coalition on Health and is Chair of its Government Affairs Committee; as Vice-Chair of the Board of the Network for Regional Health Improvement; and on the Coordinating Committee of NQF’s Measure Applications Partnership. She also serves as chair of Maine’s Chartered Value Exchange, a convener of Maine’s Aligning Forces for Quality project, and on the Advisory Council of the Maine Quality Forum. She served two terms in the Maine State Legislature, where she chaired the Health and Human Services Committee and has held posts at the National Academy for State Health Policy and London’s Nuffield Trust. Ms. Mitchell was selected for an Atlantic Fellowship in Public Policy by the Commonwealth Fund and the British Council.
Bruce Siegel, MD, MPH, is President and Chief Executive Officer at the National Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems (NAPH). Since joining NAPH in 2010, Dr. Siegel has guided the organization in implementing its new strategic vision to help members transform into integrated health care delivery systems and industry leaders in access and quality of care. With Dr. Siegel’s leadership, NAPH has established the nation’s first safety net hospital quality network under the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Partnership for Patients.
Dr. Siegel’s intimate knowledge of member needs comes in part from his direct experience within the safety net system. He previously served as President and CEO of two NAPH member systems: New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation and Tampa General Healthcare. His hands-on member experience provided a lens with which to view his research and policy work as director of the Center for Health Care Quality and professor of health policy at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services, where he served immediately prior to joining NAPH. In addition, Dr. Siegel has served as commissioner of health of the State of New Jersey. Dr. Siegel has led groundbreaking work on quality and equity for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, as well as projects for the Commonwealth Fund, the California Endowment and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Currently, he chairs the National Advisory Council for Healthcare Research and Quality.
The newly elected members began their terms on November 29 and will serve a three-year term.
The National Quality Forum operates under a three-part mission to improve the quality of American healthcare by:
- Building consensus on national priorities and goals for performance improvement and working in partnership to achieve them;
- Endorsing national consensus standards for measuring and publicly reporting on performance; and
- Promoting the attainment of national goals through education and outreach programs.
