Stephen H. Lockhart, MD, PhD, a board-certified anesthesiologist, is Chief Medical Officer for Sutter Health, a not for profit system of hospitals, physician organizations and research institutions in Northern California.
A Rhodes Scholar, he obtained his Masters degree in Economics from Oxford University, and M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Cornell. As Chief Medical Officer, he has responsibility for quality, patient safety, research and education. He also led the formation of a regional credentialing verification office, a model which he later used to create a system-wide shared services credentialing function, for which he continues to provide leadership.
He was previously Regional Chief Medical Officer for the East Bay. Prior to that, he was the Chief Administrative Officer at the St Luke’s campus of CPMC. There he was involved in improving operations and was active in community outreach and the entitlements process for CPMC’s new hospitals. He also negotiated an alliance with San Francisco General Hospital and UCSF to provide mutually beneficial orthopedic services at St Luke’s.
From 2003-2008, he served as the Medical Administrative Director of Surgical Services at CPMC, where he had a long-standing practice of 20 years. In this role, he was responsible for the operational efficiency of 42 operating rooms, clinical quality, patient satisfaction, and managed a $350M operating budget. Among his accomplishments was the creation of a patient-centered centralized pre-operative evaluation process for CPMC’s multi-campus facility which was instrumental in achieving an increase in patient satisfaction from the 9th to the 75th percentile.
An avid climber and backpacker, he has a long-standing passion for providing environmental science education and introducing our National Parks to an increasingly diverse population. Dr. Lockhart also serves on the Boards of NatureBridge, the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), REI and was previously a member of the National Parks Second Century Commission, an independent group of respected leaders and experts who convened to articulate a vision for the second century of the National Park Service and whose recommendations to Congress, the Administration, and the American people were published in September, 2009.