Patient Square Capital (“Patient Square”), a leading health care investment firm, today announced the formation of the EMPIRIC Institute (“EMPIRIC”) and the appointment of physician and health care leader Kelvin A. Baggett, M.D., M.P.H., M.B.A., as Managing Director, Head of Patient Impact and Chair of the EMPIRIC Institute.
For Patient Square, patient impact is the improvement in health and quality of life conveyed by health care products and services. The EMPIRIC (“Excellence in Medicine, Patient Impact Research, Innovation and Care) Institute will focus on researching, measuring, and enhancing patient impact within current and prospective Patient Square portfolio companies. The EMPIRIC Institute will be fully integrated into the firm’s investment process as a part of its Transformation and Growth Team. Its capabilities will include medical leadership, health economics and outcomes research, clinical and scientific process improvement, quality management, and statistical research and data analysis.
Dr. Baggett is a nationally recognized health care leader with over 20 years of academic and industry experience as a physician, clinical leader, operator, and advisor. Previously, he served as Chief Impact Officer and Executive Vice President at McKesson Corporation, Senior Vice President & Chief Clinical Officer for Tenet Healthcare Corporation, and Chief Operating Officer, Clinical Strategies Group at Hospital Corporation of America (HCA). He is a member of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Advisory Board, serves on the board of DUMAC Inc., which manages Duke University’s Endowment, pension fund and other assets, and is a Board Member of the Prostate Cancer Foundation.
Throughout the course of 2023, utilizing an internally developed evidence-based methodology, the EMPIRIC Institute team has quantified its initial baseline measurement of patient impact across the Patient Square portfolio. Its patient impact measurement encompasses health utility of individual therapies or interventions, magnitude of potential patient reach, and duration of health benefits conveyed. This baseline then allows the longitudinal tracking over time of patient impact across the portfolio. The capabilities of the EMPIRIC Institute and the measurement techniques built will also serve as due diligence inputs to investment decision making.
“We chose to name ourselves Patient Square to acknowledge our commitment to our investors in the form of patience and hard work and to the patients treated directly or indirectly by the companies into which we invest. We want to walk the walk and not simply talk the talk, and the only way to do so with respect to patient centricity and impact is a rigorous approach to measurement and a clear presentation of the results. We are delighted to have Dr. Baggett join us to bring seriousness and purpose to this effort,” said Jim Momtazee, Managing Partner of Patient Square.
Karr Narula, Founding Partner of Patient Square and Head of its Transformation and Growth Team commented, “In the health care industry, we believe firmly that patient impact is a leading indicator of strong business performance. The EMPIRIC Institute forges new ways to measure, and new capabilities to influence patient impact for the benefit of patients and the companies that serve them.” Mr. Narula added, “We are immensely fortunate to have a physician leader like Dr. Baggett who has spent his career at the intersection of medical leadership, clinical quality, health care operations and impact, to lead this effort for us.”
“As a physician operator, I’ve dedicated my life’s work to improving patient impact at scale at some of the largest and most respected health care organizations. Joining Patient Square and leading the EMPIRIC Institute now gives me an even broader platform to scale that impact across a greater number of health care organizations and the many patients they serve,” said Dr. Baggett.
About Kelvin A. Baggett
Kelvin A. Baggett, M.D., M.P.H., M.B.A., is a nationally recognized health care leader with experience as a physician, clinical leader, operator, and advisor. He brings a richly informed point of view on health and health care and how to make improvements at scale. That perspective was shaped through his positions in senior management and executive leadership positions in large health care organizations. In his previous role, Dr. Baggett served as Chief Impact Officer and Executive Vice President at McKesson Corporation.
Dr. Baggett’s career also includes serving as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) for Health Care Navigator (HCN), a privately held asset management company focused on the post-acute care and long-term care entities in multiple states; and SVP of Clinical Operations and Chief Clinical Officer for Tenet Healthcare Corporation, where he was also previously the Chief Medical Officer. Before joining Tenet, he served as Chief Operating Officer, Clinical Services Group at Hospital Corporation of America (HCA).
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Baggett served in a voluntary capacity, as the Dallas COVID-19 Health and Healthcare Access Czar.
Dr. Baggett completed his training in Internal Medicine at the Yale University School of Medicine. He completed advanced training as a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar in the Department of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and as a General Internal Medicine Fellow at the Duke University School of Medicine. He earned his B.S. in Biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a Doctor of Medicine Degree from the East Carolina University School of Medicine, a Master of Public Health Degree from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a Master of Business Administration from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. He is a member of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Advisory Board, The Board of Visitors for Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, serves on the board of DUMAC Inc., which manages Duke University’s Endowment, pension fund and other assets, and is a Board Member of the Prostate Cancer Foundation.