Healthcare is Hard: A Podcast for Insiders · 2026-04-16 · 47 min
Dr. Bob Wachter describes his career as the result of “what happens when a political science major becomes an academic physician.” Rather than focus on one specialty or scientific domain, he became fascinated by the healthcare system itself and has spent more than 40 years examining how care is organized, where it breaks down, and how technology can help make it better. The author of more than 300 articles and six books, Dr. Wachter famously coined the term “hospitalist” in 1996, helping give rise to one of the fastest-growing specialties in medicine. Among other roles, he has served as president of the Society of Hospital Medicine and chair of the American Board of Internal Medicine. He also founded and directed the Division of Hospital Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), where he is currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine. For the past 15 years, Dr. Wachter has focused much of his attention on the impact of technology on healthcare, a topic that shaped his two most recent books. In The Digital Doctor , he explored why electronic health records created as much frustration as progress.
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