Rosemary Gibson

Award-Winning Author and Authority on Health Care Reform, Medicare, Patient Safety and Overtreatment

Rosemary Gibson is an award-winning author, inspirational speaker, and advisor to organizations that advance the public’s interest in health care.

Books

A national authority on health care reform, Medicare, patient safety and overtreatment in medicine, she has written critically acclaimed books: Medicare Meltdown (2013), Battle Over Health Care (2012), Treatment Trap (2010), and Wall of Silence (2003). She is the 2014 recipient of the highest honor from the American Medical Writers Association for her outstanding contributions to the field of medical communication. Her writing has given voice to the public’s interest in critical health care issues of the day.

Affiliations

Rosemary serves as Senior Advisor at The Hastings Center and a Section Editor for Less is More in JAMA Internal Medicine.
She is a board member of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education and serves on the CLER Evaluation Committee to advance safety in sponsoring institutions.

Palliative Care

At Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Rosemary was chief architect of its $200 million national strategy to establish inpatient palliative care programs that now number 1600, an increase from about 10 in the 1990s. She received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. She worked with Bill Moyers on the PBS documentary, “On Our Own Terms.”

Patient Care

Rosemary led national quality and safety initiatives in partnership with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement including Pursuing Perfection, Transforming Care at the Bedside, and Rapid Response System implementation. With nurse leaders she established QSEN and the Nursing Quality Alliance.

Public Speaker

She speaks to public audiences at diverse venues such as the New York Public Library, the AARP National Convention, George Mason University, the Woman’s National Democratic Club, Connecticut Center for Patient Safety, Maine Quality Counts, Maine Area Agencies on Aging, among others. She speaks to state policy makers at the National Council of State Legislators and the National Academy of State Health Policy.

She is a public member of the American Board of Medical Specialties Health and Public Policy Committee and Consumers Union Safe Patient Project.  She served on the AHRQ Technical Expert Panel for Consumer Reporting of Adverse Events. Rosemary has given presentations and grand rounds on patient safety at hundreds of hospitals; keynoted meetings of the National Quality Forum, The Joint Commission, AONE, National Council of State Boards of Nursing, Federation of State Medical Boards, National Summit on Overuse held by The Joint Commission and AMA, the Society of Critical Care Medicine, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, among others. She has served as  faculty for the Telluride Patient Safety Summer Camp and the Dartmouth Summer Symposium on Quality Improvement and was its 2013 “wizard.”

Acclaim

Her books have been reviewed in Publishers Weekly, Washington Post, Journal of the American Medical Association, and Health Affairs; referenced in proceedings of the U.S. Senate; mentioned in Congressional testimony; noted in the WSJ, NYT, USA Today, Consumer Reports, Boston Globe, O Magazine, Reader’s Digest, US News and World Report, Minneapolis Star Tribune, the St Louis Post Dispatch, Governing magazine, among others. Rosemary has appeared on Chicago Tonight, WBGH’s Greater Boston, Fox News, The Doctors, and C-Span Book TV. Her books have received international acclaim.  Wall of Silence was translated into Japanese, and the Chinese translation of Treatment Trap won the prestigious Open Book Award from China Times.

Early Career

Earlier in her career, Gibson was a senior associate at the American Enterprise Institute, Vice President of the Economic and Social Research Institute, a policy think tank, and consultant to the Medical College of Virginia and the Virginia state legislature’s Commission on Health Care. She served as a volunteer and Board member at a free medical clinic in Washington, D.C.