Ezekiel Emanuel, M.D.

Vice Provost of Global Initiatives | Levy University Professor | Perelman School of Medicine and The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Twitter iconFacebook iconInstagram iconYoutube icon
Ezekiel J. Emanuel is the Vice Provost for Global Initiatives, the Diane V.S. Levy and Robert M. Levy University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a Special Advisor to the Director General of the WHO.

He is one of the leading practitioners shaping the future of healthcare, with a long record of experience at the top levels of policy. He is an engaging, incisive, forthright, and witty speaker on healthcare reform and the transformation of American medicine. Trained both as an oncologist (MD, Harvard Medical School) and a political scientist, Zeke offers a uniquely thoughtful perspective on the most difficult issues in medicine today.

From January 2009 to January 2011, Zeke was a special advisor for health policy to the White House Office of Management and Budget. As one of the most prominent voices advising the White House about healthcare, he had a significant impact on federal healthcare budgets and the Affordable Care Act.

He is a founding chair at the Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health. He currently serves as Chair of the meta-council on The Future of Health Committee for the World Economic Forum. Until 1997, he was an associate professor at the Harvard Medical School.

He has also authored or edited 15 books including two books published in 2020. Dr. Emanuel (with Abbe Gluck) co-authored a book titled The Trillion Dollar Experiment. Zeke's Which Country Has the Best Health Care in the World?, is an examination of ten health care systems across the globe, in search of the best. His most recent book, Prescription for the Future, identifies standout medical organizations that have achieved higher-quality, more patient-focused, and lower-cost care, and from their examples distills twelve transformational practices that could transform the entire healthcare sector.

Dr. Emanuel served on President Clinton's Health Care Task Force, the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC), and the bioethics panel of the Pan-American Healthcare Organization. He developed The Medical Directive, a comprehensive living will that has been endorsed by Consumer Reports on Health, Harvard Health Letter, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. He has published over 300 peer-reviewed articles on the ethics of clinical research, health care reform, international research ethics, end of life care issues, euthanasia, the ethics of managed care, and the physician-patient relationship. He is also a contributor to Fox News offering healthcare and policy analysis.

Dr. Emanuel also serves as a Venture Partner at Oak HC/FT in addition to serving as contributor for the New York Times and CNN. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine, Association of American Physicians, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Royal College of Medicine. He is a 2018 recipient of the Dan David Prize in the category of Bioethics, an honor recognizing innovative and interdisciplinary research that cuts across traditional boundaries and paradigms.

Topics

Why I Want to Live at 75

Taking his controversial essay in The Atlantic, “Why I Hope to Die at 75," as a starting point, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel will explain why he wants to live to 75. He will question conventional wisdom about aging and dying and will push audience members to define for themselves what makes a life meaningful.

Show more

The Future Direction of the American Health Care System

Dr. Emanuel shares practical, concrete steps that payers and providers, as well as businesses and government, can take in order to adapt to the major shifts happening within healthcare, and to transform the American healthcare system to provide consistently higher-quality and lower-cost care.

Show more

Megatrends: What the Future Holds for Healthcare in Crisis

American healthcare is changing more rapidly now than it has in decades. What will our healthcare system look like 5,10 years from now? How will it impact your audience? In this talk, Dr. Emanuel will outline the nine megatrends he believes will characterize the changing landscape of American healthcare over the next decade: 1) merging of payers and providers—amplifying value-based payments 2) reducing upcoding and other gaming of medicare advantage 3) ever more automation 4) hospital closures and concentration 5) transformation of remote patient monitoring into remote patient management 6) expansion of comprehensive primary care 7) mental health parity 8) improved maternity and newborn care and 9) enhancing critical non-health care services. There are few people better positioned to project the future of American health care than Dr. Emanuel — and he will draw on his vast experience as a practicing physician, researcher, policymaker, as well as his discussions with thousands of leaders in the health sector to help audiences understand what’s coming next in the healthcare system.

Show more

Health Care Reform and the Future of American Medicine

In this presentation, Zeke describes the pressing need for health care reform, the key innovations in the Affordable Care Act, and how they are likely to impact the actual delivery of care. From improving efficiency with "inter-operable" electronic health records to restructuring care delivery to improve outcomes and lower cost, Dr. Emanuel will provide an insider's view of the vision driving health care reform, the challenges looming, and how the future of American medicine will impact you.

Show more

Delivering Healthcare of the Future: The 12 Transformational Practices of Highly Effective Medical Organizations

Physicians and hospitals are always being asked to transform their care, to embrace the triple aim and provide more patient-centric, high –quality care. But what does this mean? How can physician practices and hospital systems become higher-value providers? After studying approximately 20 successfully transformed, high-performing medical organizations, including both innovative medical organizations and new companies, Dr. Emanuel delineates 12 key practices necessary for transformation. and These practices range from changing how patients are scheduled, registered, and roomed, to incorporating behavioral health services, palliative care, community-based interventions, and lifestyle interventions with standard primary care. Through engaging case studies of patients and medical organizations, Dr. Emanuel illustrates how these transformational practices can be effectively implemented. Recognizing that no medical organization can implement 12 practices simultaneously, Dr. Emanuel separates the transformational practices into three tiers of differing priority. Using this model, Dr. Emanuel shows how, through the implementation of these 12 practices, a provider or practice can transform to deliver consistently high-quality, low-cost care. Dr. Emanuel also address on the growing field of virtual medicine. Taking a contrarian perspective, he argues that virtual medicine should not be a central component to a medical organizations’ transformational strategy. Remote monitoring, virtual visits, and other technologies are unlikely to be an effective way to improve quality and lower costs, especially for high-cost patients with chronic conditions. The applicability of the 12 transformational practices extends beyond use by only providers and health systems. Through case studies, Dr. Emanuel shows that these same practices may also be used by patients to find high-performing physicians and practices for their own personal care.

Show more

Addressing Clinician Burnout: Moving Beyond Individual Interventions

Clinician burnout is at an all-time high. A generally taxing career made even more difficult by a global pandemic, many healthcare workers are just barely holding on. Between 47%-60% of physicians and over 60% of nurses report burnout. This is bad news not only for worker mental health and productivity, but also for patients, as burnout is linked to increased medical errors and delays and decreased attention to patients. The situation is so dire that the Surgeon General has named health worker burnout a national priority. What can healthcare leaders do about it? Burnout isn’t an individual problem and thus treating the individual will never be an effective solution. The answer lies in meso-level interventions, or those initiated at an institutional level. In this talk, Dr. Zeke Emanuel outlines the four overlooked causes of clinician burnout and provides the data-backed solution each one. By restoring centrality of meaning in patient care, enhancing worker autonomy, reinforcing patient-clinician respect, and fostering collegiality, leaders can reverse this alarming trend and ensure your employees are always in a place to give their best.

Show more

Addressing Burnout: Moving Beyond Individual Interventions

Reports show that up to 77% of employees across all industries have experienced burnout at some point in their careers. For years, the onus has been on the worker to resolve this issue in the name of self-help books, meditation, and the like. More recently, employers have sought to assist with burnout by way of employee wellness initiatives like office happy hours and in-house yoga sessions. But the research shows little evidence of these measures of having an impact because the focus is ultimately still on the micro-level. Burnout isn’t an individual problem and thus treating the individual will never be an effective solution. To truly solve the burnout dilemma, organizations must think bigger. In this talk, Dr. Zeke Emanuel introduces the data-backed meso-level interventions—those initiated at an institutional level—that have proven to effectively reduce burnout in workers. By prioritizing meaningful work, enhancing worker autonomy, fostering collegiality in a way that doesn’t force social interactions, and promoting a culture of well-being, you can reverse this alarming trend and ensure your employees are always in a place to give their best.

Show more

Videos

The Future of Healthcare Symposium 2017 | Keynote-Pepperdine Graziadio
Ezekiel Emanuel, M.D.
The further spread of coronavirus has to be prevented by social distancing | MSNBC
Ezekiel Emanuel, M.D.
The Ethics of Healthcare | Chicago Humanities Festival https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKJY0riwlMo
Ezekiel Emanuel, M.D.
Social distancing is of vital importance | MSNBC
Ezekiel Emanuel, M.D.
Concerns of subsequent surges cloud long term view of coronavirus spread in U.S. | MSNBC
Ezekiel Emanuel, M.D.

Articles

Newspaper icon
For Obese Patients, Wegovy Is Worth the Cost
Wall Street Journal
Newspaper icon
How Health Insurance Eroded Americans’ Earnings and Exacerbated Inequality
Bloomberg
Newspaper icon
Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance Premium Cost Growth and Its Association With Earnings Inequality Among US Families
JAMA Network
Newspaper icon
Why haven’t health care cost increases exceeded inflation? There’s a very good reason
STAT News
Newspaper icon
The Moral Deficiencies of a Liberal Education
New York Times
Newspaper icon
What Happens If We Don’t Learn from the COVID Pandemic?
Governing
Newspaper icon
Cancer patients shouldn’t be responsible for out-of-pocket costs
STAT News
Newspaper icon
Nine Health Care Megatrends, Part 2: System Reconfiguration
HealthAffairs
Newspaper icon
Nine Health Care Megatrends, Part 3: Patient Care
HealthAffairs
Newspaper icon
Nine Health Care Megatrends, Part 1: System and Payment Reform
HealthAffairs
Newspaper icon
Drug shortages are an urgent national danger. Here’s how we fix them.
Washington Post
Newspaper icon
Stop dismissing the risk of long covid
Washington Post
Newspaper icon
Automation Can Make a Doctor's Job Easier
Wall Street Journal
Newspaper icon
Zeke Emanuel's Provocative Advice on Making Healthcare Better
Yale Insights
Newspaper icon
China's Zero-Covid Policy Is a Pandemic Waiting to Happen
New York Times
Newspaper icon
A National Strategy for the "New Normal" of Life With COVID
JAMA

Podcasts

Book Ezekiel Emanuel, M.D. for your event
Request Availability
Download Bio
PDF icon
Global Health
Health Equity
Health Policy
Improving Quality
Patient-Centered Care
Physicians & Other Providers
Social Determinants of Health
Public Health
Moderators
Wellness & Mental Health
Twitter iconFacebook iconInstagram iconYoutube icon

Related speakers

No related speakers.
By continuing to browse you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts. If you do not wish to allow cookies, please see our cookie policy for instructions. Learn more