Dr. Bruce Wellman

Bio

Dr. R. Bruce Wellman is a clinical pathologist whose career traces the full arc of American healthcare leadership -- from the laboratory bench to the chief executive’s office and back. After training as a pathologist in the U.S. Army and earning his MD from the University of Michigan, he joined the Carle organization in Illinois in 1985 and chaired its pathology department before moving into executive leadership. As President and CEO of the Carle Clinic Association from 2001 to 2010, he led a physician group of more than 300 doctors, its regional clinics, and a physician-owned health plan -- guiding the organization to over $150 million in retained earnings and, in 2010, its landmark integration with the Carle Foundation. He went on to serve as CEO of the Carle Physician Group and Chief Medical Officer of Carle Foundation Hospital, overseeing care for a region of more than a million people. A gubernatorial appointee to Illinois’s Health Information Exchange Board, he has worked throughout on the questions this summit takes up: how integrated systems, insurance design, technology, and governance shape the cost, quality, and sustainability of care. He now practices clinical pathology and advises a regional blood center.