UM Hospitals CEO Voted Chair of Michigan Health & Hospital Association

The leader of the University of Michigan Hospitals and Health Centers will now also be the elected leader of the state hospital association, after a vote held last week.

Doug Strong, CEO of UMHHC, is now chairman of the board of trustees of the Michigan Health & Hospital Association, or MHA.

At the organization's annual meeting on Mackinac Island, Strong laid out his goals for his one-year term of office.

They include continuing to enhance the state of Michigan's reputation as a leader in improving the quality and efficiency of patient care, and shifting the health care industry's focus to an effort to address the health and health care needs of populations of Michiganders, not just individual care episodes.

Strong, who has led UMHHC for nearly six years, is devoted to improving the quality, safety, efficiency and appropriateness of care at U-M and across the state.

During his time as CEO, UM has been recognized nationally for these efforts, including:

* 14 years on the US News & World Report Honor Roll of Best Hospitals
* Recognition on lists such as the US News Top Children's Hospitals, the Leapfrog Group's Top Hospitals for patient safety, the Consumers Choice list from the National Research Corp., the Consumers' Checkbook/AARP list of top hospitals, and several years on the Thomson Reuters Top 100 Hospitals list
* Specialized recognition in areas ranging from blood clot prevention to intensive care nursing excellence
* The Environmental Leadership Circle Award from Practice Greenhealth
* Special recognition as part of the 2008 American Hospital Association's McKesson Quest for Quality competition

As part of the University of Michigan Health System, UMHHC has taken part in virtually every MHA initiative to improve care, and UM physicians and nurses have helped lead several MHA efforts.

For instance, UMHHC has been a key player in the MHA Keystone efforts to reduce hospital-acquired infections and improve care from the emergency department to the operating room to the intensive care unit. U-M is also participating in MHA's Green Hospital and Healthy Food Hospitals efforts to make hospitals more environmentally friendly and to improve the nutrition and carbon footprint of patient meals.

This year, under Strong's leadership, UMHS launched a quality and safety Web site that makes UMHHC among the most "transparent" in the country. Located at www.uofmhealth.org/quality, the site gives anyone access to detailed data about how well UM performs on many measures of care quality, appropriateness and safety.

The MHA represents all of Michigan's community hospitals and advocates on behalf of hospitals and the patients they serve. In addition to his work with MHA, Strong is active in the University Health System Consortium and the Association of American Medical Colleges' Council of Teaching Hospitals and Health Systems.

He earned an MBA in health care administration from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he also held several positions at the School of Medicine. He joined UM in 1998 as associate vice president for health system finance and strategy, and became chief financial officer before assuming his current job on an interim basis in October 2005 and on a permanent basis in August 2006.

Before coming to Ann Arbor, he served as CFO and associate dean of the Pritzker School of Medicine and the Biological Sciences Division at the University of Chicago, associate dean for administration and finance at the School of Medicine of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and associate dean of planning and operations at the Saint Louis University School of Medicine.

The University of Michigan Health System includes the UM Hospitals & Health Centers, comprised of three hospitals and more than 40 outpatient health centers and clinics; the UM Medical School, with its Faculty Group Practice and extensive research and education programs; and the Michigan Health Corp. The three UM hospitals are University Hospital, C.S. Mott Children's Hospital, and Von Voigtlander Women's Hospital. UMHS is one of the nation's biomedical research powerhouses with total research funding of more than $480 million a year.

More at www.med.umich.edu.