Jonathan Sugarman, MD, MPH
President & CEO
Jonathan R. Sugarman, MD, MPH is President and CEO of Qualis Health, an independent, private, nonprofit healthcare quality improvement and care management organization headquartered in Seattle, Washington. Under his leadership, Qualis Health has become a national leader in the generation, application and dissemination of knowledge to improve the quality of healthcare delivery and health outcomes.
Qualis Health’s services include support of quality and safety initiatives, care management, health information technology and business process improvement consulting, and health services research and evaluation. Qualis Health holds Medicare Quality Improvement Organization (QIO) contracts in two states, contracts with five state Medicaid agencies and serves many other public and private sector organizations.
Before he joined Qualis Health in 1995, Dr. Sugarman served in a number of clinical, administrative and research capacities with the Indian Health Service. Dr. Sugarman has served as an advisor for a number of government and private sector quality measurement and improvement initiatives, and has authored over 75 papers and book chapters.
He has conducted research and led quality improvement efforts related to a broad range of acute and chronic conditions, with particular emphasis on diabetes mellitus, health problems of American Indians and quality of care among Medicare beneficiaries. He serves as the principal investigator of a national demonstration project funded by the Commonwealth Fund to help safety net clinics implement the Medical Home model of primary care.
Dr. Sugarman is a graduate of Harvard College, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the University of Washington School of Public Health and Community Medicine. He is the immediate past president of the Washington Academy of Family Physicians, past president of the American Health Quality Association, past chair of the American Academy of Family Physicians Commission on Quality and a member of the Executive Committee of the American Medical Association Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement (PCPI). Dr. Sugarman is Clinical Professor in the Departments of Family Medicine and Epidemiology at the University of Washington.
Dr. Sugarman has been honored with the Vision Award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Improving Chronic Illness Care National Program Office, the Portland Area Indian Health Service Director’s Award for Outstanding Performance and the Indian Health Service Exceptional Service Award, and the Talbot Award for Compassion, Empathy and Clinical Excellence from the Seattle Indian Health Board. He was named by the World Health Organization as a member of its Network of Innovators.
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