American Academy of Family Physicians Honors Robert E. Nesse, M.D., With Premier Family Physician Executive Award

Friday, October 3, 2003

Robert E. Nesse, M.D., of Mantorville, Minn., is the recipient of the American Academy of Family Physicians' (AAFP) Robert Graham Physician Executive Award. Nesse is recognized for his outstanding service as a physician executive and his personal commitment to health-care quality improvement.

This annual award recognizes an outstanding family physician for his or her role as a physician executive. Candidates for this award are members of the AAFP whose executive skills in health-care organizations have:

• contributed to excellence in the provision of high-quality health care;
• fostered the tenet of family practice; and
• demonstrated how family physicians can have an impact on improving health

Nesse is the first family physician to serve as the vice chair of the Mayo Clinic Rochester Board of Governors. In this capacity he directs the institution's strategic planning and represents the Mayo Clinic at regional and national forums.

Working with Dartmouth Intermountain Health Care and a Pittsburgh hospital coalition, Nesse led a Mayo Clinic team in addressing Medicare payment reform. This team developed and supported the introduction of Senate Bill S.2752, aimed at amending Title XVII of the Social Security Act to provide for the establishment of Medicare demonstration programs to improve healthcare quality.

A founding board member of the Institute for Clinical Systems Integration (ICSI), a collaborative of competing health systems in Minnesota, Nesse has addressed practice efficiencies and innovation, outcome measurements and discontinuities of care across health systems. He has helped shaped the program during the past 10 years and is responsible for the successful implementation of ICSI-developed disease management strategies in Mayo Clinic Family Medicine and across the 64 primary care practices of the Mayo Health System in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa.

Nesse has served in a variety of other leadership positions at Mayo Clinic Rochester, including chair of the Administrative Committee of the Board of Governors, chair of the Managed Care Operations Committee and chair of the Disease Management Coordinating Committee. He has also served as a member of the CEO group of the Minnesota Executive Session for patient safety. Currently, Nesse serves as a member of the board of directors of Mayo Management Services, Inc., Mayo Collaborative Services and the Fransciscan Skemp Health Care System.

Nesse's leadership career began in 1991 as lead physician for the John Deere Company Primary Care Clinics and Disease Management Strategies Project. The outcome of the project was the development of a concept in disease management strategies to address the control of unexpected variation in health-care delivery and Nesse’s personal commitment to healthcare quality improvement.

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The Minnesota Academy of Family Physicians is a professional association approximately 2,700 family physicians, family practice residents and medical students organized to assist family physicians in providing quality medical care in Minnesota. The MAFP is the largest medical specialty organization in Minnesota and is a state chapter of the American Academy of Family Physicians, the largest medical specialty organization in the United States with more than 93,000 members.