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The Indiana University School of Medicine has selected Dr. Rachel Patzer as the next president and CEO of the Regenstrief Institute in Indianapolis.
Patzer currently serves as director of the Health Services Research Center at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. She is also a tenured professor in the university’s Department of Surgery. She is also the founder of the Health Services Research Center at Emory.
Patzer, who’ll begin the job May 1, succeeds Dr. Peter Embi, who left Regenstrief in late 2021 after five years leading the institute to take a position at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Department of Biomedical Informatics.
The institute had two interim CEOs following Embi’s departure: Dr. Umberto Tachinardi, who assumed the role in December 2021, and Dr. Susan Hickman, who took over in March 2022.
Patzer, a native Hoosier, joined the Emory School of Medicine faculty in 2011 and was promoted to professor in 2021. Regenstrief praised her as a nationally-recognized expert in epidemiology and health services research.
IU School of Medicine Dean Dr. Jay Hess cited Patzer’s “career-long dedication” to finding innovative ways to collect and utilize data for solving complex health challenges.
“Over the course of her career, Dr. Patzer’s work in using data to expose inequities and inefficiencies in health systems aligns perfectly with the important work being done by our world-class researchers at the Regenstrief Institute,” Hess said in a written statement. “It is a critical time in our community for health care research, and I am confident that Dr. Patzer is the transformative leader needed to take the Regenstrief Institute into the future.”
In addition to her role as president and CEO, Patzer will serve as the Leonard Betley Chair at the institute. She will also serve as a professor at the IU School of Medicine Department of Surgery and hold joint appointments with the Department of Medicine and the IU Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health.
“Regenstrief has long been on my radar as a beacon of innovation and excellence,” Patzer said. “We as a society invest in health care research with an expectation of the benefits we gain from it. I believe that we can leverage the impressive strengths of the Regenstrief Institute to attain even more value from these data and accelerate the translation of this research into practice to improve not only health care, but ultimately the health of patients and populations.”
Founded in 1969, Regenstrief is an internationally known medical research organization with ties to IU School of Medicine, IU Health and Eskenazi Health.
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