Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase have appointed Dr. Atul Gawande, a renowned author and surgeon, as the CEO of their newly formed healthcare company.
Gawande, who specializes in general and endocrine surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and teaches at Harvard, will take the reins at the Boston-based company July 9.
Gawande said in a statement that he was “thrilled” at being named to lead the healthcare venture.
“I have devoted my public health career to building scalable solutions for better healthcare delivery that are saving lives, reducing suffering and eliminating wasteful spending both in the US and across the world,” he said. “Now I have the backing of these remarkable organizations to pursue this mission with even greater impact for more than a million people, and in doing so incubate better models of care for all. This work will take time but must be done. The system is broken, and better is possible.”
The companies did not immediately provide further details about their plans, but they have said they want to create a system that is “free from profit-making incentives and constraints.”
Gawande founded Ariadne Labs, a health systems innovation center that focuses on improving outcomes and saving lives in childbirth, surgery and care for serious illnesses.
He is a longtime staff writer for the New Yorker, where he has written about public health and medicine, and is the author of New York Times bestselling books Complications, Better, The Checklist Manifesto and Being Mortal.
“We said at the outset that the degree of difficulty is high and success is going to require an expert’s knowledge, a beginner’s mind, and a long-term orientation,” Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, said in a statement. “Atul embodies all three, and we’re starting strong as we move forward in this challenging and worthwhile endeavor.”
Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, said the companies were confident that Gawande would “get this important job done.”
