The following is a letter from Dr. William H. Greene:

I am delighted to have joined the MCIC senior staff, in the above position, as of June 1. However, as many of you know, I have been working with MCIC intermittently since the Board meeting in Montreal in March. During this time I have been tremendously impressed by the skill and dedication of the staff and leadership at the shareholder organizations and at the company. My brief experience has made it evident to me that we at MCIC join with the leadership of the shareholder academic medical centers (AMC’s), their affiliates, physicians and staff in a very strong commitment to making the patient experience an ever safer, higher quality and more satisfying experience.

Prior to joining MCIC I was the Chief Quality Officer and an Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine (Infectious Diseases) at the State University of New York at Stony Brook’s University Hospital and School of Medicine respectively. I decided to join MCIC precisely because of that palpable commitment.  I believe that the resources currently and potentially available for assisting the AMC’s in their pursuit of excellence in combination with the breadth, diversity and reputation for leadership of the AMC’s and their affiliates both locally and nationally will create opportunities for unprecedented successes.

I am intent on supporting our AMC’s by helping to lead MCIC to become the preeminent medical liability insurer in the United States by collaboratively developing programs and personnel that will further promote patient safety and lessen risk. MCIC and its respective medical centers have already been very successful  over the past 5 years in joining to do precisely that for patients in the very high risk areas of obstetrics and emergency medicine and (nursing) care at the bedside. Of course, the AMC’s have also pursued quite substantial improvements in these and other areas through their own internal performance improvement and patient safety programs. We look forward to strengthening our relationships with the physician and institutional leaderships and staff of those programs.

Over the next several months my staff, colleagues and I will be putting together a draft of an MCIC 5-year strategic plan for loss prevention and patient safety. In that effort I plan to visit each of the medical centers and many of their affiliates in order to better understand their strategic plans for quality and safety. I believe it is also essential to understand the AMC’s long-term institutional strategic plans for program and facility development and for the creation of alternative health care delivery settings. Only by doing so can MCIC understand the risk associated with those plans and assist the medical centers in assuring that these programs and care settings deliver the highest measurable levels of safe patient care.

I am hopeful that those of you who read this and wish to offer ideas and suggestions as to what the strategic plan should encompass (or any other approaches you believe would be helpful) will feel free to do so by getting in touch with me at wgreene@mcic.com or at 212-461-1595. I know that as medical care transforms itself over the next decade it is essential that MCIC be an agent for change, support and leadership that will facilitate our AMC’s in achieving the safest possible patient care. In turn, we will all, but especially your patients, reap the rewards of shared successes.