Interview: Achieving STEEEP healthcare: a journey supported by comparative effectiveness research

Abstract

David J Ballard, MD, MSPH, PhD, FACP, is the Chief Quality Officer for Baylor Scott & White Health (TX, USA), the largest not-for-profit healthcare system in the state of Texas, founded on 1 October 2013 from the combination of Baylor Health Care System and Scott & White Healthcare. David joined Baylor Health Care System in 1999 as its first Chief Quality Officer and was responsible in that role for designing, implementing and evaluating initiatives related to clinical effectiveness, patient safety and other dimensions of healthcare quality improvement across the healthcare system. Under his leadership, the system earned several awards for healthcare quality improvement, including the 2010 Medical Group Preeminence Award of the American Medical Group Association, the 2008 National Quality Healthcare Award of the National Quality Forum, and the 2007 Leapfrog Patient-Centered Care Award. A board-certified internist, David trained at the Mayo Clinic (MN, USA) following completion of degrees in chemistry, economics, epidemiology and medicine at the University of North Carolina (NC, USA) where he was a Morehead Scholar and served as professor of medicine and epidemiology at Emory University (GA, USA). In addition to his role as Chief Quality Officer for Baylor Scott & White Health, he is President and Founder of the STEEEP® Global Institute (TX, USA), which is dedicated to helping other organizations deliver healthcare that is safe, timely, effective, efficient, equitable and patient-centered. Among several national and international leadership roles, he was President of the International Society for Quality in Healthcare (2001–2003), and is the 2013–2014 Chair of the Steering Committee for the Centers on Education and Research in Therapeutics for the US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. He serves on several editorial boards, including Health Services Research, the Journal of Comparative Effectiveness Research and the Mayo Clinic Proceedings (for which he serves as Health Policy Section Editor). David was the 1995 recipient of the AcademyHealth New Investigator Award, given annually to the outstanding health services research scholar in the USA less than 40 years of age, and the 2012 recipient of the John M Eisenberg Article-of-the-Year in Health Services Research. In 2008, he received the Distinguished Alumnus Award of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.