Rosemary Gibson

Rosemary Gibson is Senior Advisor at The Hastings Center and founding editor for Less is More Perspectives in JAMA Internal Medicine.

At Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Rosemary was chief architect of its $250 million, decade-long national strategy to establish inpatient palliative care programs that now number 1600, an increase from about 10 in the 1990s. She received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, and  worked with Bill Moyers on the PBS documentary, "On Our Own Terms."

While at the Foundation, Rosemary led national quality and patient safety initiatives in partnership with the Institute for Health Care Improvement: Pursuing Perfection, Transforming Care at the Bedside, and Rapid Response System Implementation. She is the recipient of the Lewis Blackman Patient Safety Award from the South Carolina Hospital Association.

She is the 2014 recipient of the highest honor from the American Medical Writers Association for her contributions to the field of medical communication. Her writing gives voice to the public’s interest in critical health care issues of the day. She is author of Medicare Meltdown (2013), Battle Over Health Care (2012), Treatment Trap (2010), Wall of Silence (2003).

Rosemary is chair of the board of the Altarum Institute, a non-profit health systems research organization headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

She is a board member of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education and serves on the ACGME CLER Evaluation Committee which aims to engage resident physicians in improving quality and patient safety.

Rosemary serves on the MedStar Health System Institute for Quality and Patient Safety Advisory Board in Washington, D.C., and is faculty for the Academy for Emerging Health Care Leaders, an annual summer patient safety immersion program for medical and nursing students and resident physicians.

She is a public member of the American Board of Medical Specialties Health and Public Policy Committee and Consumers Union Safe Patient Project. 

Rosemary has given presentations and grand rounds on patient safety at hundreds of hospitals; keynoted meetings of the National Quality Forum, The Joint Commission, National Board of Medical Examiners, American Academy of Otolaryngology, AONE, National Council of State Boards of Nursing, Federation of State Medical Boards, National Summit on Overuse held by The Joint Commission and AMA, Society of Critical Care Medicine, among others. She has been faculty for the Dartmouth Summer Symposium on Quality Improvement and was its 2013 "wizard."

She has spoken to public audiences at the New York Public Library, the AARP National Convention, George Mason University; legislators at the National Council of State Legislators; Women’s National Democratic Club, Connecticut Center for Patient Safety, Maine Quality Counts, Maine Area Agencies on Aging, among others. 

Her books have been reviewed in Publishers Weekly, Washington Post, JAMA, Health Affairs; referenced in proceedings of the U.S. Senate; mentioned in Congressional testimony; noted in the WSJ, NYT, USA Today, Consumer Reports, and Boston Globe, O Magazine, Reader's Digest, US News and World Report. Wall of Silence was translated into Japanese; the Chinese translation of Treatment Trap won the prestigious Open Book Award from China Times. Rosemary has appeared on Chicago Tonight, WBGH’s Greater Boston, Fox News, The Doctors, C-Span Book TV.

Rosemary graduated summa cum laude from Georgetown University and has a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics.