EVMS Commencement

Speaker Biography

Mark R. Chassin, MD, FACP, MPH, MPP, oversees the nation’s predominant standards-setting and accrediting body in health care. Joint Commission accreditation and certification is recognized worldwide as a symbol of quality that reflects an organization’s commitment to quality improvement and to meeting state-of-the-art performance standards.

Dr. Chassin is also President of the Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare. Established in 2009 under Dr. Chassin’s leadership, the Center works with hospitals and health systems to address health care’s most critical safety and quality problems.

Dr. Chassin received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Harvard University and a master’s degree in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He also holds a master’s degree in public health from the University of California at Los Angeles. He is a board-certified internist and practiced emergency medicine for 12 years.

Previously, Dr. Chassin was the Edmond A. Guggenheim Professor of Health Policy and founding Chairman of the Department of Health Policy at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, and Executive Vice President for Excellence in Patient Care at The Mount Sinai Medical Center. Before coming to Mount Sinai, Dr. Chassin was Commissioner of the New York State Department of Health.  His background also includes service in the federal government and many years of health services and health policy research.

While at Mount Sinai Medical Center, Dr. Chassin built a nationally recognized quality improvement program. His research at Mount Sinai focused on developing health-care quality measures; using those measures in quality improvement; and understanding the relationship of quality measurement and improvement to health policy. He also designed a number of community-based intervention trials that reduced racial and ethnic disparities in health and health care.

Dr. Chassin has been recognized for his contributions to the fields of quality measurement and improvement with several honors. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Sciences and was selected in the first group of honorees as a lifetime member of the National Associates of the National Academies, a new program that recognizes career contributions. In addition, Dr. Chassin was a member of the IOM committee that authored “To Err is Human” and “Crossing the Quality Chasm.” He is a recipient of the Founders’ Award of the American College of Medical Quality and the Ellwood Individual Award of the Foundation for Accountability.