David Blumenthal, MD, MPP is Director, Institute for Health Policy and Physician at The Massachusetts General Hospital/Partners Health Care System in Boston, Massachusetts. He is also Associate Professor of Medicine and Associate Professor of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School.

From 1987-1991 Dr. Blumenthal was Senior Vice President at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a 720-bed Harvard teaching hospital. From 1981 to 1987 he was Executive Director of the Center for Health Policy and Management and Lecturer on Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. During the late 1970s, he was a professional staff member on Senator Edward Kennedy’s Senate Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research.

Dr. Blumenthal is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and serves on several editorial boards, including The New England Journal of Medicine, American Journal of Medicine, and the Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine. He serves on advisory committees to the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Social Insurance and several foundations. He is currently Executive Director for The Commonwealth Fund Task Force on the Future of Academic Health Centers and Chairman of the Board of the Massachusetts Peer Review Organization.

His research interests include the future of academic health centers under health care reform, quality management in health care, the determinants of physician behavior, access to health services, and the extent and consequences of academic-industrial relationships in the health sciences.