8:00 a.m. - 9:00 a.m.
Opening Keynote Address
Evolving our Approach to Leadership in Healthcare
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Like many health care institutions across the nation, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center is working to rethink how healthcare organizations are structured in order to address modern challenges. At MD Anderson, in particular, leading requires a business mindset as well as competencies in the traditional areas of health care management and academic medicine. Leadership is also a great responsibility and a privilege. MD Anderson’s President, Peter Pisters, MD, will speak on leadership in health care from an academic medical center perspective, what it means to him and current efforts on enhancing leadership through organizational redesign and a commitment to continuous learning, as demonstrated through the launch of MD Anderson’s Leadership Institute.
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Peter Pisters, MD
President
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Dr. Pisters is president of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, where he where he previously served in faculty and leadership positions for more than twenty years. His appointment to the presidential post, effective December 1, 2017, followed an international search and a unanimous naming as sole finalist by The University of Texas System Board of Regents. Renowned as a cancer surgeon, researcher, professor and hospital administrator, Dr. Pisters earned his medical degree at Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Western Ontario in Canada. He completed his master’s degree in health care administration at Harvard University School of Public Health and did his postgraduate work at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, where he was chief administrative fellow. He earned designation as a Certified Physician Executive in 2014 and was named a fellow of both the American College of Healthcare Executives and the American College of Surgeons. Most recently, Dr. Pisters led more than 14,000 employees and 1,700 physicians as president and chief executive officer of the University Health Network (UHN) in Toronto, Canada.