David J. Ballard, MD, FACP, MSPH, PhD, MBA

About

A global health care thought leader, David is a board-certified internist who trained at Mayo Clinic with degrees with honors in economics, epidemiology, medicine, and business at UNC.

David was Associate Professor at Mayo, Associate Professor with tenure at UVA and Professor of Epidemiology and Medicine with tenure at Emory University. He joined Baylor Health Care System (BHCS) in 1999 as its first Chief Quality Officer (CQO) and, upon the merger of BHCS and Scott & White Health, became CQO of Baylor Scott & White Health (BSWH), Texas’s largest health care system. He served on the Board of Managers of The Heart Hospital Baylor Plano, the BSWH-Kessler/Select rehabilitation and long-term care board, the High Value Health Care Collaborative board and the xG Health Advisory Board of Geisinger Health System. Awards under David’s leadership included the 2007 Leapfrog Patient-Centered Care Award and the 2008 National Quality Award of the National Quality Forum.

Ballard retired from BSWH to join Mentice as Chief Clinical Officer and President to partner with health care systems to improve safety and efficiency through endovascular simulation performance solutions and was elected to the Mentice board after its IPO in 2019. He serves as advisor for Pascal Metrics, the world’s leader in health care harm measurement and related solutions to advance patient safety and a Scientific Advisory Board member for InSyncDx Solutions, Inc. In May 2020, he co-founded Concentric Health Alliance, which is dedicated to the provision of safe, timely and high value Coronavirus pandemic Personal Protective Equipment and other relevant medical supplies for health care systems and other organizations. David is Chief Clinical Advisor for M3, a global health care executive search firm. He is also an Advisory Board member for Via Group Partners, a leadership advisory and investment group.
 
David received the AcademyHealth New Investigator Award and John M. Eisenberg Article-of-the-Year in Health Services Research. His books, Achieving STEEEP Health Care and The Guide to Achieving STEEEP Health Care, received Shingo Research Awards for contributions to operational excellence. He was Consultant and founding Head of Mayo’s Section of Health Services Evaluation; founding President, Kerr L. White Institute for Health Services Research; President, International Society for Quality in Health Care and Chair of AHRQ’s Health Care Quality and Effectiveness Research study section. He was chair of AHRQ’s Centers for Education and Research on Therapeutics Steering Committee and member of AHRQ’s National Advisory Council. At UNC, David received the Distinguished Alumnus Awards of the School of Medicine in 2008 and of the School of Public Health Department of Epidemiology in 2019, and serves as Adjunct Professor of Health Policy and Management and a member of the UNC Chancellor’s Global Leadership Council and of the Leadership Advisory Board for the Center for the Business of Health. He serves as the Healthcare Policy section Editor for the Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

Education