People
June 21, 2010
Sanfilippo shifts roles; Caughman is interim health care head
Emory’s health affairs leader Fred Sanfilippo is stepping down from his executive duties to pursue his interest in personalized health care; S. Wright Caughman will serve as interim head.
Effective Sept. 1, Sanfilippo will resign as Emory University executive vice president for health affairs, CEO of the Woodruff Health Sciences Center, and chairman of the board, Emory Healthcare.
Sanfilippo holds faculty appointments in the School of Medicine and the Rollins School of Public Health and will help coordinate and expand studies on cost, quality, and access to health care under a wide range of different payment and clinical delivery models, with the objective of supporting new forms of personalized health care.
Sanfilippo said the passage earlier this year of the national health care reform act, which provides $10 billion in funding for supporting new health care models, test bed and Health Innovation Zones, makes this an opportune time to study innovation in health care. At Emory he will help coordinate and expand studies on cost, quality, and access to health care under a wide range of different payment and clinical delivery models, with the objective of supporting new forms of personalized health care.
“I look forward to working with Emory’s incredible array of schools and centers throughout the health sciences and the rest of the University as well as local and national partners to develop new models for cost-effective, high-quality health care that is tailored to the needs of the individual patient,” said Sanfilippo.
Caughman is director of The Emory Clinic, the group practice of the School of Medicine faculty, and the executive associate dean for clinical affairs in the School of Medicine. As clinic director, Caughman heads the major faculty physician practice plan of Emory, comprised of over 1,000 faculty physicians. He has been a member of the Graduate School in the Graduate Division of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, of the Winship Cancer Institute faculty, and has served as director of the Emory Skin Diseases Research Center.
“Wright is a 20-year Emory veteran who will be able to assume the full authority of this critical leadership role,” said President Jim Wagner in announcing the leadership transition. Wagner said Caughman’s impeccable credentials as a clinical and scientific leader and his strategic role spanning all of the schools and major operating units in the Woodruff Health Sciences Center, including Emory Healthcare, made him a uniquely strong choice to take over at the helm.
Wagner thanked Sanfilippo for his leadership of the health sciences since joining Emory in 2007.
“Fred has my gratitude for his vigorous work on a number of fronts, all of which are important to Emory’s future as a top-tier academic health sciences center of national distinction,” Wagner said.
