Greg Pawlson, M.D., M.P.H. FACP, AGSF, TIPC is physician and executive coach whose current focus is on leadership and life skills development and furthering our understanding of leadership in relationship to coaching. These efforts include work with the Institute for Experiential Learning, the development of a year long leadership and life skills course for Geriatric Palliative Care Fellows from across the US in concert with Helen Fernandez MD at Mt. Sinai Medical Center in NY, and Lynn Flint MD at the University of California, San Francisco. A online version of this course is supported by the American Geriatrics Society and offered to all Geriatric Fellows. Greg is also senior faculty with Lodestar Consulting and Executive Coaching, and consultant and executive coach with the Center for Nursing Leadership at UCSF. He is on the coaching group for the Institute of Medicine and the Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellows. Another major area of current work is through his being a fellow of the Institute of Coaching-Harvard McClean Hospital where Greg is leading a portion of an IOC fellow project to define, develop and disseminate new frameworks for evidenced based leadership.
Dr. Pawlson is a Hudson Institute certified executive and life coach and previously certified by the International Coaching Federation. As part of his interest in coaching, he has obtained certification in positive psychology, resilience and grit from the Center for Positive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania in use of the KELP assessment by the Institute for Experimental Learning and in Trauma Informed Coaching from Lodestar Coaching.
In the recent past, he designed and taught an 3 credit on line course on Financing, Reimbursement and Cost in the DNP program at George Washington University and currently academic appointments as a clinical professor in the School of Medicine and Health Sciences and as an adjunct professor in the School of Nursing at George Washington University, In addition, he and his wife, Jean Johnson, PhD, FAAN, the founding Dean of the School of Nursing at GW, created and implemented a Cousera based course on Leadership for Quality and Safety that has had over 50,000 enrollees and 5,000 course completers, and co-authored also with her, a textbook on quality and safety published in 2022, Protecting Patients, Improving Care: Advancing Healthcare Quality and Safety. Dr. Pawlson also serves is a Senior Medical Consultant for Saxton Stump LLC and SE Healthcare Quality Consulting, focusing on malpractice defense, patient safety and quality improvement.
Before his “preferment” Dr. Pawlson served as Executive Director for Quality Innovation for Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, Washington DC, for two years, and prior to that as Executive Vice President of the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), for twelve years. While at NCQA, he led the development of NCQA research, quality measurement and related grant and contracting activities, overseeing the ongoing development of the widely used HEDIS clinical performance measures. He also worked on the development of assessment and quality improvement programs for the Patient Centered Medical Homes and Accountable Care Organizations, and served as liaison for NCQA to physician groups, including the AMA-led Physician Consortium for Practice Improvement, the American College of Physicians, the American Academy of Family Physicians and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Earlier in his career, Dr. Pawlson was involved in Academic Medicine for nearly 25 years, serving as Senior Associate Vice President for Health Affairs and Medical Director for Quality and Utilization Management for the faculty practice at The George Washington University Medical Center. Prior these posts at GW, he was chairman of the University’s Department of Health Care Sciences (clinical primary care and public health) and Director of the Institute for Health Policy, Outcomes and Human Values. During his time in academic medicine, he also served as a Robert Wood Johnson Policy Fellow on the staff of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee and as a Fellow in the Center for the Study of Change in Academic Medicine at the American Association of Medical Colleges. While on the Senate Finance Committee staff he worked within the office of George Mitchell, D-Me, on bills related to Medicare expansion and drug benefit, nursing and medical workforce issues and on nursing home reform.
Dr. Pawlson was active in organized medicine serving as President and Chairman of the Board of the American Geriatrics Society, and on the Boards of the Society of General Internal Medicine, the American College of Medical Quality, the American Board of Medical Quality, the Bon Secours Health System, the U.S. Soldiers and Airman’s Home and as Chair of the Advisory Group for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s (AHRQ) Innovations Exchange. He is the author of over 100 peer-reviewed articles and numerous other publications including a forthcoming text book, Eliminating Errors and Improving Quality, written with his wife Jean Johnson PhD, FAAN. .Dr. Pawlson is board certified in internal medicine and is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, the American Geriatrics Society, The Gerontological Society of America and the American College of Preventive Medicine. He received his BS degree., cum laude, from The Pennsylvania State University, an M.D. with Distinction from the University of Pittsburgh, did his internship and residency at Stanford University, He then served as a staff fellow in the Metabolism Branch of the National Heart institute and an endocrine fellow and Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar while obtaining an M.P.H. in Community Medicine at the University of Washington. He and his wife Jean Johnson PhD, FAAN have four children, seven grandchildren and reside in Cabin John Maryland and Lake Anna, Virginia.
