CEO keeps finger on pulse of health care.

PositionPeople - Dennis Barry - Interview - Biography

Some people can't stand hospitals. Dennis Barry, 63, isn't one of them. Since 1979, he has been president and CEO of Moses Cone Health System in Greensboro. He's also chairman of the American Hospital Association, the nation's largest trade group for hospitals and health systems. His AHA duties take up about a third of his time and keep him shuttling between Greensboro and Washington, D.C., where its policy and advocacy offices are based and where he often testifies before Congress on health-care issues. His one-year chairmanship will end in January, but he will remain a member of the six-person executive committee.

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How does he characterize the state of the nation's health care? "The system we have in place is in trouble. We need fairly significant change." He ticks off a list of problems: too many people without health coverage, limited access to care for the uninsured, lack of proper technology, poor promotion of healthier living and medical liability. "We need a no-fault liability environment to reduce defensive medicine. Physicians do far more than they need to sometimes because they are so concerned about liability."

That's not to say he advocates socialized medicine. "No," Barry says emphatically. "We can find good solutions that stop short of that, yet preserve the private characteristics of our delivery system. But we can't do...

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