Robert Wachter, MD
Robert M. Wachter, MD is Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine at UCSF, where he is the Holly Smith Distinguished Professor in Science and Medicine and the Benioff Endowed Chair in Hospital Medicine. The department leads the nation in NIH grants and is generally ranked as one of the nation’s best. Wachter is author of 300 articles and 6 books. He coined the term “hospitalist” in 1996 and is often considered the father of the hospitalist field, the fastest growing specialty in the history of modern medicine. He is past president of the Society of Hospital Medicine and past chair of the American Board of Internal Medicine. In the safety and quality arenas, he has written two books on the subject, including Understanding Patient Safety, the world’s top selling safety primer. His 2015 book, The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age, was a New York Times science bestseller. In 2016, he chaired a blue-ribbon commission advising England’s National Health Service on its digital strategy. In 2020, his tweets on Covid-19 were viewed over 100 million times by 150,000 followers and served as a trusted source of information on the clinical, public health, and policy issues surrounding the pandemic.
Among his honors include: John M. Eisenberg Award (the nation’s top honor in patient safety); ranked by Modern Healthcare magazine as one of the 50 most influential physician-executives in the U.S. thirteen times (#1 in 2015); Master of the American College of Physicians; National Academy of Medicine.