Dr. Edward McEachern, age 43, Chief Executive and Chairman of Initiatives, is a founding member of IHI and originated the concept of a hospital company that is owned and managed by physicians and that caters to the needs of physician owners/partners in each community it has hospitals.  He has been the VP-MA and COO of a major western hospital system, the Chief Medical Officer and Senior Vice President of the Northeast Ohio Community Health Plan in Cleveland, Ohio, (the 1.6 million covered life managed health plan for Blue Shield and Blue Cross of Ohio), where he developed innovative approaches to working with providers, payers, and patient / members to improve health, lower costs and demonstrate better health outcomes.  Dr. McEachern built and ran a 2,800 practice, 8,500-physician Management Services Organization in 30 states with gross revenues of $80 million for the SunHealth alliance (now Premier Inc.).  Dr. McEachern was Vice President for Medical Affairs at Hospital Corporation of America (HCA)'s West Paces Ferry Hospital in Atlanta, and quality improvement consultant for direct patient care to HCA's Corporate Office in Nashville, Tenn.  He has served as the associate director of the Case Western Reserve Center for Health Services Research and Improvement, as special assistant to Metro Health Medical System on quality, and as a faculty member at Case Western University School of Medicine.  He has also been the founder of a healthcare informatics firm, as well as a pharmaceutical corporation. 

A native of Nashville, Tennessee, Dr. McEachern earned an undergraduate degree in biology at Emory University.  After graduating, he was named to a year-long honors program of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland as a Robert T. (Bobby) Jones Scholar, where he earned a co-terminal masters degree in biological systems theory and statistics.  After earning his M.D. degree at Case Western Reserve University, Dr. McEachern completed a health services research fellowship at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation and a pathology/lab medicine residency at the University of California in San Francisco.  He completed a second residency in internal medicine at Case Western Reserve University’s MetroHealth Medical Center.  He currently is an adjunct faculty member in the Department of General Internal Medicine at Case Western Reserve University’s MetroHealth Medical Center and also serves as a consultant to the center.  He also worked at Vanderbilt University's Center for Health Services.

Internationally, Dr. McEachern developed a universal model of direct patient care quality improvement for use in over 120 lesser-developed countries for the U.S. Agency for International Development.  He designed and helped implement the Peace Corps' world-wide medical corps quality improvement plan, and provided consultation for the governments of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Zimbabwe in the design and redesign of their health care delivery systems.