Jeff Goldsmith

Biography

Jeff Goldsmith is President of Health Futures, Inc. He is also Associate Professor of Public Health Sciences at the University of Virginia. For eleven years ending in 1990, Jeff Goldsmith was a lecturer in the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago, on health services management and policy. He has also lectured on these topics at the Harvard Business School, the Wharton School of Finance, Johns Hopkins, Washington University and the University of California at Berkeley. Jeff Goldsmith's interests include: biotechnology, international health systems, and the future of health services.

From 1982 to 1994, Jeff Goldsmith served as National Advisor for Healthcare for the firm Ernst and Young, and provided strategy consultation to a wide variety of healthcare systems, health plans, supply and technology firms. Prior to 1982, he was Director of Planning and Government Affairs at the University of Chicago Medical Center and Special Assistant to the Dean of the Pritzker School of Medicine. From 1973 to 1975, Jeff Goldsmith worked in the Office of the Governor, State of Illinois as a fiscal and policy analyst, and Special Assistant to the State Budget Director.

Jeff Goldsmith earned his doctorate in Sociology from the University of Chicago in 1973, studying complex organizations, sociology of the professions, and politics of developing nations. He graduated from Reed College in 1970, majoring in psychology and classics, earning a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship for graduate study in 1971.

Jeff Goldsmith was the recipient of the Corning Award for excellence in health planning from the American Hospital Association's Society for Healthcare Planning in 1990, and has received the Dean Conley Award for best healthcare article three times (1985, 1990 and 1995) from the American College of Healthcare Executives. He has written six articles for the Harvard Business Review, and has been a source for articles on medical technology and health services for the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Business Week, Time and other publications. Jeff Goldsmith is a member of the editorial board of Health Affairs.

Titles

Changing of the Guard: How the Impending Generational Transition among Physicians will Change Medicine and Health Services
The present US health system is “powered by baby boom physicians”. As these physicians gear down or retire outright, they are being replaced by younger physicians with different values, practice goals and communications styles. How will this generational transition affect medical practice, as well as hospital/physician relations? How will policymakers cope with the impending scarcity of practicing physicians as the baby boom itself enrolls in Medicare?

Obama’s Health Reforms: How Will They Affect the Health System
President Obama won the Presidency in part on a pledge to reform healthcare, and provide coverage to the more than 45 million uninsured people in the United States. How will the present economic crisis constrain him from fulfilling this pledge? Who has he chosen to lead his health reform efforts, and how will they shape his policy choices? What are the new Administration’s options in closing the coverage gap, as well as in containing and managing health spending?

Healthcare and the Economic Crisis
As the US struggles to recover from the recession which began in 2008, it is clear that the health system has been profoundly affected. Not only have healthcare finances been affected by the debt crisis. Healthcare demand itself has weakened as hard pressed consumers postpone using health services. How will the unfolding economic crisis affect hospitals, physicians, health plans and healthcare technology firms? What strategic adaptations are required to weather this crisis, and anticipate the future shape of the health system?

The Fate of the Baby Boomers
A Twenty-year Look Forward at the Impact of the Baby Boom generation on the health system and society. Will they trigger a boom in the demand for health services, and in doing so, wreck our safety net programs- Medicare and Social Security? What will they need and how will we market to them? What are the plans of baby boomers, and will the U.S. economy survive their retirement?

The Consumer Revolution in Healthcare
A brief history of consumer-centric health care and its major driving forces. How will consumers leverage their access to knowledge about their own illness and about the capabilities of the health system to assume greater control over their and their family’s health?

Digital Medicine: The Future of Information Technology in Healthcare
How will modern information technology alter the role of the major actors in healthcare: consumers, health plans, hospitals, physicians and pharmaceutical firms? How will modern IT transform health services, and improve quality, productivity and health worker morale at the same time? Why has IT adoption been so slow and painful in healthcare?

Can We Afford Our Health System?
At $2.3 trillion, the U.S. Health system is the size of a large industrial nation. Is the American public getting its money's worth? This lecture will examine why health costs have grown, the technological and demographic factors driving that growth, and argue that fundamental improvements in quality of life, particularly for old Americans, have resulted.