Top health system CEOs meet with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago
The CEOs of four prestigious healthcare systems gathered in Florida on Dec. 28 to meet with President-elect Donald J. Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach – reportedly to discuss care delivery reforms and ways to overhaul the Department of Veterans Affairs.
At the meeting were Toby Cosgrove, MD, of the Cleveland Clinic, John Noseworthy, MD, of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.; Paul Rothman, MD, of Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore, and David Torchiana, MD, of Partners HealthCare in Boston.
This was not Cosgrove's first trip to Mar-a-Lago. The Washington Post reported that Cosgrove met with Trump on Dec. 20 to be interviewed to head the VA. It's a post for which Cosgrove was considered back in 2014, when President Barack Obama interviewed him for the job. Cosgrove said no then.
Earlier this month, Cosgrove was tapped by the Trump team to join the President's Strategic and Policy Forum – a 19-member panel that is described by the incoming administration as offering non-partisan advice to the president-elect.
A cardiac surgeon and Vietnam veteran, Cosgrove has serve as the Cleveland Clinic's CEO and president since 2004.
Noseworthy, a neurologist who is president and CEO of the Mayo Clinic, in recent years has been an occasional commentator on healthcare reform, speaking on a variety of TV news shows, including Meet the Press.
In an interview with The Washington Post last November, Noseworthy told reporters that Mayo Clinic had already offered to help Trump's transition team.
"We're basically optimistic we can create a better system together," he said.
Rothman, the chief executive of Johns Hopkins Medicine, is also dean of the medical faculty and vice president for medicine of The Johns Hopkins University. He oversees both the school of medicine and the healthcare system.
Torchiana is chief executive of Partners HealthCare in Boston, which includes Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women's Hospital, both associated with Harvard Medical School. Partners also operates several other hospitals in Greater Boston. He assumed the post in March 2015, having previously been chief of cardiac surgery at Mass General from 1998 to 2003.
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