06-09-2024 HOF - Flipbook - Page 17
Baltimore Sun Media | Sunday, June 9, 2024
JOHN B. CHESSARE
J
ohn B. Chessare has a clear memory of sitting in the library during his
freshman year at Boston College, “writing a five-page paper on a five-line
poem” while his roommates were at a football game.
He was barely an adult, but he already knew he wanted to be a doctor.
Still, he had ambitiously overloaded his schedule with courses that
wouldn’t help him get into medical school, and his grades suffered because
of it.
“I had, essentially, cooked myself,” said Chessare, CEO of the Greater Baltimore Medical
Center in Towson.
He didn’t have the GPA to get into medical school, at least not in America. Instead, Chessare,
whose grandparents emigrated from Italy, enrolled in medical school in Rome. There, he played
semiprofessional basketball, learned a new language and — most importantly — gained an international perspective on medicine, which he still credits
Name: John B. Chessare
Age: 72
Hometown: Wayne, New Jersey
Current residence: Baltimore
Education: University of Rome,
M.D.; University of Massachusetts
Medical Center, pediatric
residency; Boston Children’s
Hospital and Harvard Medical
School, fellowship training in
general academic pediatrics;
University of Michigan School of
Public Health, M.P.H. in medical
care organization
Career highlights: CEO of GBMC
since 2010; previously, Caritas
Christi Health Care System’s
Norwood Hospital president and
senior vice president for quality
and patient safety (Boston);
executive level leadership roles at
Boston Medical Center, Boston
University School of Medicine,
Albany Medical Center and Albany
Medical College, and the Medical
College of Ohio
Civic and charitable activities:
Co-leader of GBMC’s The Promise
Project; a fundraising campaign
to expand and improve GBMC’s
facilities, including the ongoing
construction of the Sandra
R. Berman Pavilion, which will
consolidate all cancer care
services at the hospital
Family: Married to Dr. Tracey
Chessare, four children
with influencing his views on the challenges faced by
the American health care system.
“We have the best-trained people in the world, and
they work really hard, but we do not have the best
health care system,” Chessare said. “It lets our people
down every day, and now is so costly. The largest
source of bankruptcy in the country is medical bankruptcy.
“It doesn’t have to be that way. We can easily serve
all Americans better and save money,” he said, “but
we have to let go, take a deep breath and redesign the
system.”
Chessare, a pediatrician by training, has been in
charge of GBMC for more than a decade. Throughout his tenure, he has earned national recognition and
praise for his commitment to delivering quality and
efficient patient care, as well as his support of advanced
primary care — a model that prioritizes preventive
medicine and chronic disease management.
Dr. Donald Berwick, president emeritus and senior
fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement —
and the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services during Barack Obama’s presidency
— recognized Chessare’s drive and compassion for his
patients when the doctor was early in his career.
“I can’t think of a better
health care chief executive
anywhere in this country or
abroad,” said Berwick, who
was Chessare’s research
adviser at Boston Children’s Hospital, where he
completed a fellowship after
graduating from medical
school. “He’s quite extraordinary.”
For his part, Chessare
identified working with
Berwick — a preeminent
expert in health care quality and improvement, who
was appointed an honorary knight by Queen Elizabeth II for his efforts to help
reform Britain’s National
Health Service — as another
influential moment in his
career. It’s what got him
interested in studying leadership and management,
and sparked his passion
for making the delivery of
health care better.
It was also in Boston that
Chessare met Dr. Joshua
Sharfstein, now the chair of
Maryland’s Health Services
Cost Review Commission,
who served as the state’s
health secretary from 2011 to
2014. At the time, Sharfstein
was completing a residency
program at Boston Medical Center and Children’s
Hospital, and Chessare was
his clinic preceptor.
“I’ve always admired his
fundamental concern for
patients — that they get the
right care, that they get the
right care to stay healthy,”
Sharfstein said. “He really
taught me that the most
important question to ask is,
‘Is it right for the patient?’ ”
Chessare was hired to lead
GBMC in 2010, the same year
Congress voted to pass the
Affordable Care Act — the
most significant reform of the
country’s health care system
since the establishment of
Medicare and Medicaid in
1965. During his interview
with the hospital’s board of
directors, Chessare said, he
pitched an idea.
“You have a strong balance
sheet,” he told them. “You
have some room for experimentation. And what the
whole country needs is … a
true system of care that can
get at chronic disease and
try to keep people out of the
hospital.”
Chessare is proud to have
advocated for Gilchrist
Hospice Care — the largest hospice network in the
state, which GBMC owns
and operates — even when it
wasn’t making much money.
He is also proud of reforming the hospital’s primary
care practice to be less
about episodic interactions
between doctors and patients
and more about catching
chronic diseases early and
helping patients manage
them.
“We don’t celebrate a full
hospital anymore,” he said.
“We celebrate trying to keep
people out of the hospital.”
Another victory happened
in 2020, when GBMC
became the first health
care system in Maryland to
receive the Malcolm Baldrige
National Quality Award —
the country’s highest presidential honor for quality
management.
“Your achievement is a
reflection of your sustained
commitment to excellence
in patient care,” Dr. Anthony
Fauci, the most famous
doctor in America at the
time, said in a video posted
on GBMC’s website. “What
a welcome bright spot in this
most challenging year.”
— Angela Roberts
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