John D. Birkmeyer, M.D.

John D. Birkmeyer, M.D. received his Bachelors degree at Boston College and his M.D. degree from Harvard Medical School. After completing his General Surgery residency and fellowship in Medical Informatics at Dartmouth Medical School, he joined the Dartmouth faculty in 1996, later serving as Chief of the Section of General Surgery. He moved to the University of Michigan in 2004 as the George D. Zuidema Professor of Surgery and now serves as Director of the Center for Healthcare Outcomes & Policy, a 100+ member, multidisciplinary research program specializing in population-level health services research.

Dr. Birkmeyer is an internationally-recognized leader in surgical outcomes research, quality, and health policy. He has almost 200 peer-review studies in this field—including numerous articles that have appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA and the Lancet. He has a long track record of research funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality, including several ongoing projects focused on understanding variation in hospital outcomes and costs with surgery. He has served in advisory roles for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the American College of Surgeons-National Surgical Quality Improvement Program, and chairs the expert panel on evidence-based hospital referral for the Leapfrog Group, a large coalition of health care purchasers. He plays a leading role in numerous, statewide collaborative quality improvement initiatives funded by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan covering a diverse range of clinical conditions.

Dr. Birkmeyer was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 2006.