Charles R. Denham, Md

CHARLES R. DENHAM, MD

Charles R. Denham, MD, has a business development career spanning more than 20 years, which has resulted in numerous product and process innovations. As a radiation oncologist, professor of biomedical engineering, and instructor at a number of medical schools and business schools, he has taught innovation adoption, technology transfer, and commercialization. He has served on numerous editorial boards of journals as a Health Information Technology (HIT) and solution specialist, authored numerous publications, and is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Patient Safety. He is a 2009 senior fellow of the Harvard University Advanced Leadership Initiative, and is in the President's Circle of the National Academies of Science advising the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Science, and the National Academy of Engineering. In 2006, Dr. Denham was ranked number 31 in the “50 Most Powerful Physician Executives” by Modern Healthcare.

Dr. Denham is the CEO and founder of HCC Corporation, a business development accelerator that has led, developed, or supported 400 product development teams in more than 50 product categories, including pharmaceuticals, devices, capital equipment, and Health Information Technologies.

He is the chairman and founder of Texas Medical Institute of Technology (TMIT), a non-profit medical research organization dedicated to driving adoption of clinical solutions in healthcare performance improvement. TMIT has established a National Research Test Bed of more than 3,100 hospitals, through which it accelerates the adoption of high-impact performance improvement solutions, products, services, and technologies. This Test Bed is served by more than 250 clinical and administrative subject matter experts from a number of our nation’s best academic and front-line institutions. TMIT has established a National Harmonization Program through task forces with The Joint Commission, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), and The Leapfrog Group, in order to generate a synchronized set of practices that will provide a common roadmap to hospitals. This harmonization effort provides a common set of targets that the payers can build into their purchasing programs.

Dr. Denham is the chairman of The Leapfrog Group’s Safe Practices program, which ranks U.S. hospitals on an annual basis, providing the mechanism for consumers and insurance purchasers to reward quality improvement by their purchasing. The Leapfrog Group is a consortium of more than 170 Fortune 500 companies, with more than $69 billion in healthcare purchasing power, responsible for more than 34 million covered lives. As co-chairman of the National Quality Forum’s Safe Practices Consensus Committee, Dr. Denham and TMIT are involved in updating the NQF’s Safe Practices on an ongoing multi-year basis.