| Charles R. Denham, MD
Dr. Denham has had a healthcare product and solution development career that has spanned over 20 years. He was an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Texas in Austin from 1983 to 2003 and he has also served as an instructor at a number of medical schools and business schools - with a focus on innovation adoption, technology transfer, and commercialization. His research has resulted in numerous product and process innovations in surgery, oncology, imaging, image guided surgery, pharmaceuticals and ophthalmology. He has served on the editorial boards of journals as a technology application specialist and authored several works in basic science, managed care and medication management and safety. He is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Patient Safety .
He is CEO of the HCC Corporation (HCC). Launched in 1983, HCC is a business development accelerator in medical, technical, and service product fields. It has led, developed, or supported over 400 product development teams in over 50 product categories including pharmaceuticals, devices, capital equipment, and software applications. Non-medical HCC efforts range from aerospace, e-commerce, fitness, and software to consumer health product categories. HCC is the developer of a care-centered, evidence-based Breakthrough Technology Processing System now used for product assessment and purchase by one third of US hospitals purchasing over $22 billion in products in 2005. Dr. Denham is the inventor of software-based innovation design and development decision support systems, which HCC has further developed, that is used by numerous global healthcare supplier and high technology companies with more than $90 billion in revenues and over 95% U.S. hospital market penetration. HCC is a private equity investor in high impact evidence based products, services, and technologies. It provides the infrastructure for accelerated market penetration.
Dr. Denham is a founder and Chairman of the Texas Medical Institute of Technology (TMIT), a non-profit medical research organization dedicated to drive adoption of clinical solutions in patient safety and healthcare performance improvement. TMIT and HCC have established a National Research Test Bed of more than 3100 hospitals through which it studies and accelerates the adoption of high impact performance improvement solutions consisting of products, services, and technologies that enable best practices. The numerous task forces and practicing communities of TMIT are served by an online knowledge management system which can be accessed at www.SafetyLeaders.org .
TMIT sponsors numerous projects in patient safety and collaborates with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement for which Dr. Denham serves as a faculty member in the area of technology assessment and adoption. TMIT is a leading developer of practical practices that enable providers to succeed in national and local Pay-For-Performance programs. TMIT and HCC have had formal collaborative initiatives with numerous federal agencies and associated organizations including the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS), the Institute of Medicine (IOM), Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), NASA, and the Department of Defense (DOD). Dr. Denham is a member of the leadership alliance of the Secretary of Health and provides advisory support to the national organ donor program sponsored by HRSA.
Since 2003, Dr. Denham has been the Chairman of The Leapfrog Group Safe Practices Program. The Leapfrog Group is a consortium of more than 170 Fortune 500 companies with over $69 billion in healthcare purchasing power who are responsible for more than 34 million covered lives. The TMIT funded program ranks US hospitals on an annual basis, providing the mechanism for consumers and insurance purchasers to reward quality improvement and patient safety by their purchasing. The initiative, chaired by Dr. Denham, is served by a Senior Medical Advisory Board including ten global leaders in patient safety and quality and more than 250 clinical and administrative subject matter experts from a number of our nation's best academic and frontline institutions. The program focuses on 30 Safe Practices established by a public-private partnership, led by the National Quality Forum (NQF), charged by the US Congress to establish standards under the auspices of the Innovation Transfer Act of 1995. TMIT has funded and leads this multi-year program with yearly updates to a survey, scoring method, and national ranking system.
In 2005, Dr. Denham was appointed Co-chairman of the NQF Safe Practices Consensus Standards Maintenance Committee, which is responsible for updating the NQF Safe Practices on an ongoing multi-year basis. TMIT has established an individual TMIT task force with each of JCAHO, CMS, AHRQ, IHI, and the Leapfrog Group in order to generate a synchronized set of practices that will provide a common roadmap to hospitals. This harmonization initiative provides a common set of targets that the payers can build into their purchasing methods. TMIT has also funded a national Healthcare Associated Infection project in collaboration with NQF which will establish consensus standards for hospital reporting in late 2007.
When the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 became Public Law No:109-171 it tied 2% of future gross revenue paid to hospitals to reporting of performance through 3 programs funded by TMIT initiatives.
In 2006 Dr. Denham was ranked 31 in the of 50 Most Powerful Physician Executives by Modern Healthcare . He was also appointed to the World Health Organization Collaborative Center steering committee.
In March of 2007 the NQF Safe Practices for Better Healthcare – 2006 Update consensus standards developed through the committee led by Dr. Denham were released and through the Leapfrog Group TMIT launched a pay-for-performance program that had an unprecedented 1200 hospitals reporting by July 2007.
Dr. Denham will co-chair the 2009 NQF Safe Practices update and implementation by the Leapfrog Group. He will also co-chair NQF consensus committees for Laboratory and Imaging Safe Practices for 2009.
