John D. Birkmeyer, M.D, a graduate of Boston College and Harvard Medical School, completed his General Surgery residency and a fellowship in Outcomes Research at Dartmouth. He then joined the Dartmouth faculty in 1996, later serving as Chief of the Section of General Surgery. He moved to the University of Michigan in 2004, where he is the George D. Zuidema Professor of Surgery and Director of M-SCORE. Dr. Birkmeyer has broad interests in outcomes research, claims data analysis, and value-based purchasing strategies in surgery. With funding from the National Cancer Institute, his current research is exploring why some hospitals and surgeons have better outcomes than others, with ultimate goal of improving care in all settings. Research funded by the National Institute on Aging is aimed at developing hospital-level measures of costs and quality with administrative data. He chairs the expert panel on evidence-based hospital referral for the Leapfrog Group, a large coalition of public and private health care purchasers. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 2006.

Selected publications:
Birkmeyer JD, Finlayson EVA, Siewers AS, Stukel TA, Lucas FL, Batista I, Welch HG, Wennberg DE.  Hospital volume and surgical mortality in the United States. N Engl J Med 2002;346:1137-1144.

Birkmeyer JD, Stukel TA, Siewers AS, Goodney PP, Wennberg DE, Lucas FL.  Surgeon volume and operative mortality in the United States. N Engl J Med 2003;349:2117-27.

Birkmeyer JD, Dimick JB.  Potential benefits of the new Leapfrog standards: Effect of process and outcome measures. Surgery 2004;135:569-75.

Birkmeyer NJO, Birkmeyer JD.  Strategies for improving surgical quality. Should payers reward excellence or effort? N Engl J Med 2006;354:864-70.