Charles R. Denham, MD

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Biographical Sketch

Charles Denham, MD, has had a healthcare product and solution development career that has spanned more than 25 years. A graduate of the University of Alberta, he undertook radiation oncology specialty training at the Baylor College of Medicine, with training at Texas Children’s Hospital and the MD Anderson Tumor Institute at the Texas Medical Center in Houston. He had a 12-year practice of radiation oncology. Dr. Denham was an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Texas in Austin from 1983 to 2003, and he has also served as an instructor at a number of medical schools and business schools, with focus on innovation adoption, technology transfer, and commercialization. His research has resulted in numerous product and process innovations in surgery, oncology, imaging, image-guided surgery, and ophthalmology. He has served on the editorial boards of journals as a technology application specialist and authored several works in basic science, managed care, and medication management and safety. As of December 2010, Dr. Denham is the editor-in-chief for the Journal of Patient Safety. He is currently an adjunct professor at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Health Systems Engineering. Dr. Denham is a 2011 Senior Fellow of the Harvard University Advanced Leadership Initiative, a teaching faculty member of the Harvard School of Public Health, and in the President's Circle of the National Academies of Science advising the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Science, and the National Academy of Engineering. He is also a co-founder of the Global Patient Safety Forum in Geneva, Switzerland, a convener of healthcare leaders around the world.

He is CEO of the HCC Corporation (HCC). Launched in 1983, HCC is a business development accelerator in medical, technical, and service product fields. It has led, developed, or supported 400 product development teams in more than 50 product categories, including pharmaceuticals, devices, capital equipment, and software applications. Non-medical HCC efforts range from aerospace, e-commerce, fitness, and software to consumer health product categories. HCC is the developer of a care-centered, evidence-based Breakthrough Technology Processing System now used for product assessment and purchase by one-third of U.S. hospitals purchasing more than $22 billion in products in 2005. Dr. Denham is the inventor of software-based innovation design and development decision support systems. HCC is a private equity investor in high-impact evidence-based products, services, and technologies.

Dr. Denham is founder and Chairman of the Texas Medical Institute of Technology (TMIT), a non-profit medical research organization dedicated to driving adoption of clinical solutions in patient safety and healthcare performance improvement. TMIT and HCC have established a National Research Test Bed of more than 3,100 hospitals, through which they study and accelerate the adoption of high-impact performance improvement solutions consisting of products, services, and technologies that enable best practices. The numerous task forces and practicing communities of TMIT are served by an online knowledge management system which can be found at www.SafetyLeaders.org. TMIT sponsors numerous projects in patient safety and collaborates with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, for which Dr. Denham serves as a faculty member in the area of technology assessment and adoption. TMIT is a leading developer of practical practices that enable providers to succeed in national and local Pay-for-Performance programs. TMIT and HCC have had formal collaborative initiatives with numerous federal agencies and associated organizations, including NASA, the Institute of Medicine (IOM), the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and the Department of Defense (DOD).

Since 2003, Dr. Denham has been Chairman of The Leapfrog Group Safe Practices Program. The Leapfrog Group is a consortium of more than 180 Fortune 500 companies with more than $69 billion in healthcare purchasing power, which are responsible for more than 34 million covered lives. The TMIT-developed survey and program ranks U.S. hospitals on an annual basis, providing the mechanism for market forces to drive quality improvement and patient safety. The initiative, chaired by Dr. Denham, is served by a Senior Medical Advisory Board, including ten global leaders in patient safety and quality and more than 400 clinical and administrative subject matter experts from a number of our nation's best academic and front-line institutions. The program focuses on Safe Practices established by a public-private partnership, led by the National Quality Forum (NQF), charged by the U.S. Congress to establish standards under the auspices of the Innovation Transfer Act of 1995. TMIT has funded and leads this multi-year program with yearly updates to a survey, a scoring method, and a national ranking system.

Since 2005, Dr. Denham has served as Co-chairman of the NQF Safe Practices Committee, which is responsible for maintenance of the NQF Safe Practices on an ongoing multi-year basis. TMIT operates an individual TMIT task force with each of The Joint Commission, CMS, AHRQ, IHI, and The Leapfrog Group, to provide input to the committee in order to generate a synchronized set of practices that will provide a common roadmap to hospitals. The NQF Board-Endorsed® Safe Practices provide a harmonized set of targets that the payers can build into their P4P rewards. The 2010 version of the practices, released in April 2010, provide the most harmonized guide to patient safety ever created for acute-care hospitals, nursing homes, and ambulatory-care facilities. Dr. Denham also co-chairs the NQF Laboratory Consensus Standards program, and led development of radiology standards for 2008 and 2009.

In 2006, Dr. Denham was ranked 31st of the 50 Most Powerful Physician Executives by Modern Healthcare. He is a Fellow in the Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative for 2011, a program spanning the Harvard schools of public health, medicine, business, and law.

Dr. Denham is a member of the Leadership Alliance of the Secretary of Health, which provides market penetration support for a national organ donor program, sponsored by HRSA and the Secretary.