George J. Isham, M.D., MS, Member, Center for Healthcare Economics and Policy Advisory Board, is currently a Senior Fellow at the HealthPartners Institute and is involved in understanding how health is created in populations and how to improve health and health care quality and financing. Dr. Isham is also currently Senior Advisor to the Alliance of Community Health Plans (ACHP), an organization representing the nation’s top-performing nonprofit provider aligned health plans.
Dr. Isham has significant career experience with HealthPartners, an integrated health care organization providing health care services and health plan financing and administration serving more than 1.8 million medical and dental health plan members nationwide. From 2012 to 2018, he served as a senior advisor to the board of directors and the senior management team of HealthPartners, and from 1993 until 2012, Dr. Isham served as HealthPartners’ Medical Director and Chief Health Officer, reporting to the CEO, and responsible for quality of care and health and health care improvement.
Dr. Isham has been active in health policy, serving as a member of the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) Task Force on Community Preventive Services, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s United States Preventive Services Task Force, as a founding co-chair of National Committee for Quality Assurance’s committee on performance measurement as well as founding co-chair of the National Quality Forum’s Measurement Application Partnership. He is a founding member of the advisory board for the National Guideline Clearinghouse and has served on advisory board for the National Quality Measures Clearinghouse as well as the Advisory Committee to the Director of the CDC.
Dr. Isham is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) and was designated as a National Associate of the Institute of Medicine in 2003 recognition of his contribution to its work. He has chaired the National Academies of Science Engineering and Medicine’s (NASEM) Roundtable on Population Health Improvement and the Roundtable on Health Literacy. He has chaired, served on and been a reviewer for a number of consensus committee reports, and participated in a number of National Academies’ workshops. His work at the National Academies has focused on quality of health care and public health.
Dr. Isham completed his bachelor of arts in zoology and master of science in preventive medicine/administrative medicine for the University of Wisconsin Madison and his Doctor of Medicine from the University of Illinois following which he completed his internship and residency in internal medicine, University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics, Madison, WI.