As Atul Gawande steps into a risky health CEO role, here are five challenges he faces
Dr. Atul Gawande will step out of health care’s limelight on Monday to put himself under its microscope.
Taking the helm of the new health venture funded by Amazon, JPMorgan Chase, and Berkshire Hathaway is the riskiest move of his career — one that will subject his acclaimed New Yorker narratives to a real-world stress test whose outcome is far from certain.
In the balance will hang not just his reputation as a physician and writer, but perhaps the highest-profile effort to date to leverage the private sector to fix America’s fragmented and dysfunctional health care system. Gawande has made a name for himself by proposing novel solutions to the system’s many shortcomings — from surgical checklists to rooting out unnecessary care — and testing them in specific hospitals or markets around the world.
“All the eyes of American health care will be on this new initiative,” said Andrew Dreyfus, chief executive of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts and an acquaintance of Gawande’s. “Atul understands this is high stakes, and I think that’s why he took the job.”
After interviews with leaders across the world of health care, STAT has identified five challenges Gawande
