Richard P. Shannon, MD

Richard P. Shannon, MD, has served on the boards of Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc. and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals since July 2014. He is chair of the Quality and Health Improvement Committee and is a member of the Community Health Committee and the Executive Committee.

Dr. Shannon is currently the chief quality and medical officer at the Duke University Health System.

Prior to joining the Duke University Health System, he served as the executive vice president for health affairs at the University of Virginia. He was responsible for aligning the key components of the University of Virginia Health System to achieve the goal of becoming a top academic medical center. Dr. Shannon has also served as the Frank Wister Thomas Professor and chair of the department of medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and as chair of the department of medicine at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh. Dr. Shannon has received numerous teaching awards from Harvard Medical School, Drexel University College of Medicine, and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Shannon's pioneering work in patient safety is chronicled in the chapter “First, Do No Harm” in Charles Kenney’s “The Best Practice: How the New Quality Movement Is Transforming Medicine.” His innovative work also has been featured in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, on CNN and CNBC news segments and ABC's "20/20", and was a centerpiece for the PBS report "Remaking American Medicine."

Dr. Shannon is an elected member of honorary organizations including the American Society for Clinical Investigation, and served as a senior fellow of the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. He currently is a teaching fellow for the Institute of Healthcare Improvement. He is a former director of the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center Research Hospital Board, and a former member of the Association of Academic Health Centers Board of Directors.

Dr. Shannon received his BA from Princeton University and his MD from the University of Connecticut School of Medicine. He received his training in internal medicine at Beth Israel Hospital and his cardiovascular training at Massachusetts General Hospital. He was the Francis Weld Peabody Fellow and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School before becoming the Claude R. Joyner Professor of Medicine at Drexel University College of Medicine.