HIM / Biotech Alumni Newsletter

Millenson named first Mervin Shalowitz, M.D. Visiting Scholar

Michael L. Millenson, an author and nationally recognized expert in healthcare quality, e-health, patient safety and patient empowerment, has been named the first Mervin Shalowitz, M.D. Visiting Scholar in the Health Industry Management Program of Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

The announcement was made by Joel I. Shalowitz, M.D., MBA, professor and director of the Health Industry Management Program, whose family set up the position in honor of Joel’s father. Mervin Shalowitz, M.D., FACP, was a clinician, teacher and health executive who pioneered physician-owned private medical groups in the Chicago area, established the nation’s first network model health plan (in 1971) and set up one of the first health plans in the nation that focused on serving Medicare patients.

A former president of the Illinois Society of Internal Medicine and trustee of the American Society of Internal Medicine, Merv Shalowitz was also a student mentor at the Kellogg School and Professor of Medicine at Rush Medical School. The Illinois Association of Health Plans named its Humanitarian Award in his honor. Mervin Shalowitz died at age 73 in November, 1999.

“ Mike has demonstrated a real passion for making sure the public understands what quality is in health care. This information can help people make more informed choices. My father was a champion of high-quality, affordable health care that required provider accountability and patient responsibility. Mike is a great choice for this position,” Joel Shalowitz said.

Millenson is the author of the critically acclaimed book, Demanding Medical Excellence: Doctors and Accountability in the Information Age (University of Chicago Press), now in its third printing. He also serves as a senior adviser to the Information Technologies for Better Health program of the New York-based Markle Foundation. Millenson, often a lightening rod in attempts to move public policy, has recently written an article in Health Affairs (Vol. 22:2) entitled “The Silence” and subtitled “Medicine’s continued quiet refusal to take quality improvement actions has undermined the moral foundations of medical professionalism.” Millenson was also featured prominently in a Washington Post feature article by Sandra Boodman entitled “No End to Errors,” a three-year follow-up to the IOM report.

National Public Radio called Millenson “in the vanguard of the movement” to measure and improve the quality of medical care. He is regularly quoted by the news media, and his articles have appeared in such peer-reviewed publications such as The Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law and Health Affairs, as well as in general-interest publications such as The Washington Monthly and the World Book Encyclopedia. He has testified before Congress and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, and he gave testimony on May 27, 2003 before the Federal Trade Commission on the sharing of reliable hospital quality or care information with patients. He has also lectured at the National Institutes of Health, Yale School of Medicine and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

From 1996 to 2001, Millenson was a principal in the Health Care and Group Benefits practice of William M. Mercer, Inc. From 1994 to 1996, he was a visiting scholar at what was then Northwestern’s Center for Health Services Research and Policy Studies, where he wrote his book under an Investigator Award in Health Policy Research from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Prior to that, as a long-time reporter for the Chicago Tribune, Millenson was one of the first journalists to write about health-care system issues for a general audience and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize three times. His journalism awards include the University of Missouri Business Journalism Award, the Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellowship and the Peter Lisagor Award of the Chicago chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.

Millenson is on the editorial board of the journals Quality and Safety in Health Care and Managed Care and a consulting editor of Inquiry. He holds a bachelor’s degree in history and economics from Washington University in St. Louis, where he was a member of the Economics Honor Society. A native of Washington, D.C., Millenson lives in Highland Park, Illinois with his wife, Susan, and their two children.