Robert M. Wachter

Robert Wachter, MD, who joined the Macy Foundation Board in 2023, is a physician, educator, and administrator at the University of California, San Franciso (UCSF), as well as a renowned health care thought leader and New York Times best-selling author. At UCSF, Bob chairs the Department of Medicine and is the Holly Smith Distinguished Professor in Science and Medicine and the Lynne and Marc Benioff Endowed Chair in Hospital Medicine. Modern Healthcare magazine has named him one of the 50 most influential physician executives in the US more than a dozen times, ranking him #1 in 2015. An expert in health and technology, Bob chaired a 2015-16 blue-ribbon commission that advised England’s National Health Service on its digital strategy. His two books on healthcare technology—2026’s A Giant Leap: How AI is Transforming Health and What That Means for Our Health and 2015’s The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype, and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age—were both best sellers. Bob is also known for coining the term “hospitalist” and is considered the father of hospitalist medicine, the fastest-growing specialty in American medical history. He is past president of the Society of Hospital Medicine, past chair of the American Board of Internal Medicine, and an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine.