TIME'S NOW for Women Healthcare Leaders: A Guide for the Journey

Patricia A. Gabow, MD, MACP, retired, is formerly the CEO of Denver Health. Her career has had four distinct components. The first two components, which overlapped temporally, were as an academic practitioner and researcher in the area of renal disease with emphasis initially on disorders of body fluid and electrolyte balance and subsequently on autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease. She was Principal Investigator on the largest clinical NIH Program Project Grant in Polycystic Kidney Disease for 15 years, which produced seminal observations on the systemic nature of the disease, the disease in children, the disease progression and modulators and the genetics of the disorder. The third component of her career was as physician leader. This phase began with the role of Director of the Medical Services (Chair), Medical Director of a health care system (Chief Medical Officer), and finally as the CEO of a large integrated public system. During her leadership, she led a system transformation changing a struggling public hospital system into a model integrated, high quality, fiscally stable system. This was accomplished in a series of initiatives: managing finances to put the system in the black where it remained for her 20 years of leadership despite providing $4.7 billion of uninsured care; moving the entire integrated delivery system from a city government department which it had been for 135 years to an independent governmental entity, enabling flexibility and innovation while maintaining public accountability; investing over $300 million dollars in the physical plant which created state-of-the-art facilities for vulnerable populations; investing over $400 in information technology to provide robust data and tools to improve quality, accountability, and efficiency; and creating and adopting innovations such as advice nurse lines, school-based clinics, standardized computer order sets, and Toyota Production/Lean to improve the accessibility, quality, and cost of care by adapting tools from other industries. The final component of her career has been as a national leader in health care and health care policy. This is reflected in her appointments during her career to the Commonwealth Commission on a High Performing Health System, the federal Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC, 17 members), the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Board, The Lown Institute Board, the National Governors' Association Health Advisory Committee, the Aspen Group, and as a Senior Advisor to Simpler Consulting (part of IBM Wastson Health). She has tried to share what she's learned in each phase of her career through writing (over 170 publications), lectures and board service.