Robert Pearl

Robert Pearl, MD, is executive director and CEO of The Permanente Medical Group and president and CEO of the Mid-Atlantic Permanente Medical Group. Together these organizations comprise more than 9,000 physicians and 35,000 staff members. Dr. Pearl is responsible for the health care that is delivered to more than 4.6 million Kaiser Permanente members in the states of California, Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia. Dr. Pearl is also co-CEO of The Permanente Federation, a consortium of all the Permanente Medical Groups in the nation, supporting the work of more than 20,000 Kaiser Permanente physicians and 80,000 employees. In this role, Dr. Pearl and co-CEO Edward Ellison, MD, provide leadership and strategic direction to all the Permanente Medical Groups, and to the national Kaiser Permanente program. Board certified in plastic and reconstructive surgery, Dr. Pearl received his medical degree from Yale University School of Medicine. He completed his residency in plastic and reconstructive surgery at Stanford University and currently serves on the faculty as a clinical professor of Plastic Surgery. He is also on the faculty of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he teaches courses on strategy and leadership, as well as lectures on the subject of health care technology. Selected by Modern Healthcare as one of the most powerful physician leaders in the nation, Dr. Pearl has published more than 100 articles in various medical journals and has been a contributor to many books. He has made more than 100 presentations at national meetings in the areas of clinical medicine and medical economics. In the past several years, he has been a visiting professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Haas School of Business, and Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Pearl has been a featured speaker at the Commonwealth Club and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s National Quality Forum event. In addition, he participated in the Bipartisan Congressional Task Force on Delivery System Reform and Health IT. He serves as chairman of the national Council of Accountable Physician Practices (which includes the largest medical groups from across the country). Dr. Pearl is a frequent lecturer on the opportunities to use 21st Century tools and technology to improve both the quality and cost of health care, while simultaneously making care more convenient and personalized. As a regular contributor to Forbes.com, Dr. Pearl publishes a weekly blog on the nexus of health care and business and provides frequent updates through Twitter. He is an advocate for the power of integrated, prepaid, and technologically enabled health care delivery systems. He is also a strong believer that organizations like Kaiser Permanente — in which physicians collaborate rather than compete, and a multi-specialty medical group works in partnership with a not-for-profit health plan and hospital system — are able to provide superior quality of care over fragmented insurance-based systems.