Ezekiel Emanuel, M.D.

Vice Provost of Global Initiatives | Levy University Professor | Perelman School of Medicine and The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

Global Health

Health Equity

Health Policy

Improving Quality

Patient-Centered Care

Physicians & Other Providers

Social Determinants of Health

Wellness & Mental Health

Public Health

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Topics

What is an unjust price for a drug?

The public and policy makers are complaining about what they perceive to be extremely high prices for drugs. This raises the question of when is the price of a drug excessive and "unjust." Dr. Emanuel will explain 1) why justice does matter for drug pricing and simply cannot be ignored, and 2) why other proposals to establish just drug prices — market price, production cost price, and value based pricing — are not adequate. Dr. Emanuel has developed some novel principles and standards to determine when a drug price is just and unjust with real establishment of a dollar threshold.

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.

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.

Megatrends

American health care is changing more rapidly now than it has in decades. What will our health care system look like 5,10 years from now? How will it impact your audience? In this talk, Dr. Emanuel will outline the changing landscape of American healthcare. He will begin with discussing the effects of the health reform on our current system and then will make specific, data-driven predictions about the future of American health care. He will conclude with concrete advice for what your audience can do to adapt to this new environment. 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 health care system.

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.

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.

Videos