Robert M. Wachter, MD is Professor and Associate Chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, where he holds the Lynne and Marc Benioff Endowed Chair in Hospital Medicine. He is also Chief of the Division of Hospital Medicine, and Chief of the Medical Service at UCSF Medical Center. He has published 200 articles and 6 books in the fields of quality, safety, and health policy. He coined the term “hospitalist” in a 1996 New England Journal of Medicine article, served as the first elected president of the Society of Hospital Medicine, and edits the field’s main textbook. He is generally considered the academic leader of the hospitalist movement, the fastest growing specialty in the history of modern medicine.

He is also a national leader in the fields of patient safety and healthcare quality. He is editor of AHRQ WebM&M (http://webmm.ahrq.gov), a case-based patient safety journal on the Web, and AHRQ Patient Safety Network (http://psnet.ahrq.gov), the leading federal patient safety portal.  Together, the sites receive nearly two million visitors a year. His book, Internal Bleeding: The Truth Behind America’s Terrifying Epidemic of Medical Mistakes, has been a national bestseller, and his new book, Understanding Patient Safety, was recently published by McGraw-Hill. Dr. Wachter has discussed patient safety and quality on Good Morning America, PBS’s NewsHour, Imus in the Morning, CNN’s American Morning, CBS Sunday Morning, and The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch, and been quoted in virtually every major newspaper and newsmagazine. He received one of the 2004 John M. Eisenberg Awards, the nation’s top honor in patient safety. In 2008, Modern Healthcare magazine named him the 19th most influential physician-executive in the United States (the most highly placed academician on the list). He is a member of the Board of Directors of the American Board of Internal Medicine and is on the healthcare advisory boards of several companies, including Google. His blog, www.wachtersworld.org, is one of the nation’s most popular healthcare blogs.