New Chair/Chief of Family Medicine Appointed at BUSM and BMC

Brian W. Jack, MD, has been appointed Chief of Family Medicine at Boston Medical Center (BMC) and Chair of the Department of Family Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM). Jack was hired in 1997 as physician and Vice Chair in Family Medicine at BMC and associate professor at BUSM. In 2011, he was promoted to professor at BUSM.

Jack is the principal investigator of Project RED (Re-engineered discharge), which standardizes the hospital discharge process and improves the communication between provider and patient both during the hospital stay and post-discharge. Project RED is considered a blueprint for hospitals that are trying to reduce 30-day readmission rates and is currently being used at more than 300 hospitals nationally and internationally. Through his work, he and his team have been able to reduce hospital utilization—which includes both 30-day readmissions and emergency department visits—by about 30 percent.

Jack received his medical degree from the University of Massachusetts and completed his family medicine residency at Brown University, serving as chief resident, in 1984. He completed a fellowship in high risk obstetrics at Sacred Heart Medical Center, an affiliate of the University of Washington. In 1986, he joined the Family Medicine department at Brown, where he founded the maternal and child health fellowship program, the first academic fellowship program based in a community health center. In 1997, he joined the Department of Family Medicine at Boston University as the founding Vice Chair for Academic Affairs.

Jack has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters; served on grant review panels for the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the Health Resources and Services Administration, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and reviewed papers for many leading medical journals. He has been Principal Investigator of grants from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Health Resources and Services Administration, and the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, among others.

Jack has received numerous awards and other recognition. For his work relating to improving patient safety at hospital discharge (Project RED), he received the Excellence in Patient Education Innovation award and was named Patient Safety Investigator of the Month by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. He was also one of 20 nationally to be included on HealthLeaders magazine’s “People Who Make Healthcare Better” list. His article describing Project RED was the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine’s Paper of the Year and is included in the book, “50 Studies Every Doctor Should Know.” He received the Partner in Public Health Improvement award from the CDC.

Jack is clinical director of a Kellogg Foundation funded program in Lesotho focused on improving the quality of district health services, via a new family medicine training program he initiated. He has served as a consultant to USAID, the World Bank, the US Department of State, the China Medical Board and others on the development of primary care in Lesotho, Hungary, Albania, Jordan, Romania and Vietnam.

“Dr. Jack’s commitment to improving the health care experience will be of great benefit to our patients,” said BMC President & CEO Kate Walsh. “We look forward to the leadership he will provide to the department of Family Medicine and to the hospital.”