President & CEO, Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Dean, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine
Bruce V. Rauner Professor of Business Administration
Harvard Business School
Senior Vice President & Chief Strategy Officer
New York-Presbyterian Hospital
CEO
Iora Health
Medical Director, Arkansas Medicaid
UAMS Professor of Medicine and Public Health
President & CEO
CareMore Health System
Senior Vice President Corporate Development & Business Development
American Well
Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board Co-Chair, NEJM Catalyst Innovations in Care Delivery; Chief Medical Officer, Press Ganey Associates; Editorial Board, New England Journal of Medicine
Former Medicaid Director
State of Rhode Island
B.S. Engineering, Tulane University, 1984; M.D./Ph.D. (pharmacology), Vanderbilt University, 1990. Dr. Balser undertook residency training in anesthesiology and fellowship training in cardiac anesthesiology and in critical care medicine at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD. He joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins in 1995, where he practiced cardiac anesthesiology, ICU medicine, and led an NIH-funded research program aimed at the genetics of cardiac rhythm disorders, such as sudden cardiac death. He returned to Vanderbilt in 1998 as Associate Dean for Physician Scientist Development, and soon was appointed Chair of the Department of Anesthesiology, directing one of the medical center’s largest clinical service programs. He became the Medical Center’s chief research officer in 2004, leading a period of scientific expansion that moved the Medical Center into the nation’s top 10 in NIH funding, launching big-science programs integrating health informatics and genomics that stimulated the Medical Center’s national leadership in personalized medicine.
In 2008 he was elected to the National Academy of Medicine, and later that year was named the eleventh dean of Vanderbilt’s School of Medicine since its founding in 1875. In 2009, he was also named Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs with executive responsibility for all health-related programs including the hospitals, clinics, research programs, and the medical and nursing schools. He has led the Medical Center through a period of marked service-volume growth with major inpatient expansions of the children’s hospital and the adult critical care areas, bolstered by 4% compound annual growth of outpatient visits (over 2.1 million per year), and by the creation of region’s largest, multi-state provider-led network (over 50 hospitals and 3000 clinicians: the Vanderbilt Health Affiliated Network). In 2013-2014, he led a $230 million (8%) cost reduction across all mission areas, improving the Medical Center’s competitive position in a rapidly evolving price-sensitive marketplace. In coordination with the Vanderbilt Chancellor and Board of Trust, Dr. Balser has led the Medical Center through a restructuring process that concluded April 30, 2016, placing its clinicians, hospitals, clinics, research and graduate medical education programs into a financially distinct not-for-profit corporation, Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC). As President and CEO of VUMC, he reports to an independent board of directors, while also serving as dean of the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.
Dr. Thomas Lee is Chief Medical Officer of Press Ganey and an internist and cardiologist who practices at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He is a Professor of Medicine, part time, at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health. Prior to joining Press Ganey, he served as Network President for Partners Healthcare System and CEO for Partners Community HealthCare, Inc., the integrated delivery system founded by Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital.
He is a member of the Board of Directors of Geisinger Health System, Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Geisinger Health Plan, Geisinger Quality Options, Inc., and Geisinger Indemnity Insurance Company Board of Directors. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of Health Leads; the Board of Overseers of Weill Cornell Medical College; the Special Medical Advisory Group (SMAG) of the Veterans Administration; and the Panel of Health Advisors of the Congressional Budget Office. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the New England Journal of Medicine.
He is the author of more than 300 academic articles and four books, Chaos and Organization in Health Care, Eugene Braunwald and the Rise of Modern Medicine, An Epidemic of Empathy in Healthcare, and The Good Doctor.
Named in his honor, the Thomas H. Lee Award for Excellence in Primary Care is given each year to recognize a primary care physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital who meets the needs of his or her patients exceptionally well.
Tom holds a bachelor’s degree in History and Science from Harvard College, a medical degree from Cornell University Medical College, and a master’s degree in Epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health. He lives in Milton, Massachusetts, with his wife, Dr. Soheyla Gharib, who is Chief of Medicine at Harvard University Health Services. The couple has three daughters.
