Dr. John B. Chessare has a clear memory of sitting in the library during his freshman year at Boston College, “writing a five-page paper on a five-line poem” while his roommates were at a football game.
He was barely an adult, but he already knew he wanted to be a doctor. Still, he had ambitiously overloaded his schedule with courses that wouldn’t help him get into medical school, and his grades suffered because of it.
“I had, essentially, cooked myself,” said Chessare, CEO of the Greater Baltimore Medical Center in Towson.
He didn’t have the GPA to get into medical school, at least not in America. Instead, Chessare, whose grandparents emigrated from Italy, enrolled in medical school in Rome. There, he played semiprofessional basketball, learned a new language and — most importantly — gained an international perspective on medicine, which he still credits with influencing his views on the challenges faced by the American health care system.
“We have the best-trained people in the world, and they work really hard, but we do not have the best health care system,” Chessare said. “It lets our people down every day, and now is so costly. The largest source of bankruptcy in the country is medical bankruptcy.
“It doesn’t have to be that way. We can easily serve all Americans better and save money,” he said, “but we have to let go, take a deep breath and redesign the system.”
Chessare, a pediatrician by training, has been in charge of GBMC for more than a decade. Throughout his tenure, he has earned national recognition and praise for his commitment to delivering quality and efficient patient care, as well as his support of advanced primary care — a model that prioritizes preventive medicine and chronic disease management.
Dr. Donald Berwick, president emeritus and senior fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement — and the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services during Barack Obama’s presidency — recognized Chessare’s drive and compassion for his patients when the doctor was early in his career.
“I can’t think of a better health care chief executive anywhere in this country or abroad,” said Berwick, who was Chessare’s research adviser at Boston Children’s Hospital, where he completed a fellowship after graduating from medical school. “He’s quite extraordinary.”
For his part, Chessare identified working with Berwick — a preeminent expert in health care quality and improvement, who was appointed an honorary knight by Queen Elizabeth II for his efforts to help reform Britain’s National Health Service — as another influential moment in his career. It’s what got him interested in studying leadership and management, and sparked his passion for making the delivery of health care better.
It was also in Boston that Chessare met Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, now the chair of Maryland’s Health Services Cost Review Commission, who served as the state’s health secretary from 2011 to 2014. At the time, Sharfstein was completing a residency program at Boston Medical Center and Children’s Hospital, and Chessare was his clinic preceptor.
“I’ve always admired his fundamental concern for patients — that they get the right care, that they get the right care to stay healthy,” Sharfstein said. “He really taught me that the most important question to ask is, ‘Is it right for the patient?’”
Chessare was hired to lead GBMC in 2010, the same year Congress voted to pass the Affordable Care Act — the most significant reform of the country’s health care system since the establishment of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. During his interview with the hospital’s board of directors, Chessare said, he pitched an idea.
“You have a strong balance sheet,” he told them. “You have some room for experimentation. And what the whole country needs is … a true system of care that can get at chronic disease and try to keep people out of the hospital.”
Chessare is proud to have advocated for Gilchrist Hospice Care — the largest hospice network in the state, which GBMC owns and operates — even when it wasn’t making much money. He is also proud of reforming the hospital’s primary care practice to be less about episodic interactions between doctors and patients and more about catching chronic diseases early and helping patients manage them.
“We don’t celebrate a full hospital anymore,” he said. “We celebrate trying to keep people out of the hospital.”
Another victory happened in 2020, when GBMC became the first health care system in Maryland to receive the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award — the country’s highest presidential honor for quality management.
“Your achievement is a reflection of your sustained commitment to excellence in patient care,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the most famous doctor in America at the time, said in a video posted on GBMC’s website. “What a welcome bright spot in this most challenging year.”
Name: Dr. John B. Chessare
Age: 72
Hometown: Wayne, New Jersey
Current residence: Baltimore
Education: University of Rome, M.D.; University of Massachusetts Medical Center, pediatric residency; Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, fellowship training in general academic pediatrics; University of Michigan School of Public Health, M.P.H. in medical care organization
Career highlights: CEO of GBMC since 2010; previously, Caritas Christi Health Care System’s Norwood Hospital president and senior vice president for quality and patient safety (Boston); executive level leadership roles at Boston Medical Center, Boston University School of Medicine, Albany Medical Center and Albany Medical College, and the Medical College of Ohio
Civic and charitable activities: Co-leader of GBMC’s The Promise Project; a fundraising campaign to expand and improve GBMC’s facilities, including the ongoing construction of the Sandra R. Berman Pavilion, which will consolidate all cancer care services at the hospital
Family: Married to Dr. Tracey Chessare, four children
