Martin "Marty" Makary is an American surgeon, New York Times bestselling author, and Johns Hopkins health policy expert. He has written for The Wall Street Journal,USA Today, TIME,Newsweek, and CNN, and appears on NBC and Fox News. He is the author of , a book about how business leaders and families can lower their health care costs and the grass-roots movement to restore medicine to its mission. Dr. Makary practices surgical oncology and gastrointestinal surgery at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and teaches public health policy at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Makary works in health care innovation, quality measurement science, frail and vulnerable populations, and public health disparities. He served in leadership roles at the United Nations World Health Organization for the Safe Surgery Saves Lives initiative. Makary was named one of the most influential people in healthcare by Health Magazine. In 2018, Makary was elected to the National Academy of Medicine. Makary is an advocate for disruptive innovation in medicine and physician-led initiatives such as The Surgical Checklist, which he developed at Johns Hopkins, and was later popularized in Atul Gawande's best-selling book Checklist Manifesto. In 2016, Makary and his colleagues exposed loopholes in the Orphan Drug Act accounting for higher drug pricing. His article "The Orphan Drug Act: Restoring the Mission to Rare Diseases", covered by Kaiser Heath News, led Senator Grassley's office to announce an investigation into the problem. Makary has advocated for the need for more transparency in healthcare and better quality metrics for hospitals and physicians. The American College of Surgeons recommended Makary for the position of Surgeon General of the United States.
Makary completed a surgical residency at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. where he also worked as a writer for The Advisory Board Company. Makary completed sub-specialty surgery training at Johns Hopkins in surgical oncology and gastrointestinal surgery under surgeon John Cameron, before joining Cameron's faculty practice as a partner. In his first few years on the faculty at Johns Hopkins, Makary researched and wrote articles on the prevention of surgical complications. He published extensively on frailty as a medical condition, and on safety and teamwork culture in medicine. Makary is the first author of the original scientific publications describing "The Surgery Checklist" For his original work on the checklist, Makary was asked to serve in roles at the World Health Organization where he worked closely with Dr. Gawande, and others, to develop the official World Health Organization Surgical Checklist. For his contributions to the field of medicine, Makary was named an Endowed Chair at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, becoming the youngest Endowed Chair at the time at the university. Three years later, he was named the Credentials Chair and Director of Quality and Safety for Surgery at Johns Hopkins. In 2020, Makary was named Editor-in-Chief of MedPage Today, a health care news organization with 1 million health care professionals subscribing worldwide. Makary's research led to several partnerships, including a grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research, to study obesity treatment, and a grant from the same agency to implement safety programs at 100 U.S. hospitals, a project he collaborated on with Peter Pronovost and the American College of Surgeons. Makary was also the lead author in the original paper introducing a Hospital Survey of Patient Safety Culture. Makary is the founder of "Improving Wisely", a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation funded project to reduce health care costs and improve quality by applying physician practice pattern indicators that are developed by the physicians in each sub specialty of medicine. The project aims to address low-value care while embracing reasonable variation in physician practices. The model has specialist physicians endorse measures they believe is valid, and then those physicians set the boundaries of acceptable practice variation so that extreme outlier practice patterns can be identified for improvement. Physician specific data is shared confidentially with the physician. This practice pattern approach has been identified as a novel approach to address opioid overprescribing in narcotic naive patients after standardized procedures where opioid prescribing should be limited.
Books
Makary is the author of Mama Maggie a personal story about his Aunt, a nobel peace prize nominee working in the garbage slums of Cairo. His latest book,The Price we Pay, was launched in 2018 and describes how business leaders can lower their health care costs and the grass-roots movement to restore medicine to its noble mission. Makary is also the author of the New York Times Best Selling book Unaccountable, in which he proposes that common sense, physician-led solutions can fix the healthcare system. The book was turned into the popular TV series, The Resident, which aired on Fox in 2018. Makary is also the author of the surgery textbooks "General Surgery Review" and "Surgery Review".
Advocacy
Makary is an advocate for high-consensus, common-sense reforms in healthcare. He regularly speaks on organizational culture and a culture of teamwork. He has also called for the public reporting physician-endorsed quality measures by hospitals. He and Bryan Sexton have encouraged hundreds of hospitals to take the "Culture of Safety Survey" and make their results available to their communities. Makary also advocates for price transparency and has led efforts to ask hospitals to stop suing their low-income patients.
Surgery
Makary is a pancreatic surgeon and has pioneered novel surgical procedures. He was awarded the Nobility in Science Award by the National Pancreas Foundation for performing the world's first series of laparoscopic pancreas islet transplant operations. He has traveled with his international team overseas. Makary specializes in advanced laparoscopic surgery and performed the first laparoscopic Whipple surgery at Johns Hopkins and the first laparoscopic Frey procedure for pancreatitis.
Awards and recognition
Makary is the recipient of numerous research and teaching awards, including the Best Teacher Award for Georgetown Medical School and research awards from the Washington Academy of Surgery and the New England Surgical Society. He has been a visiting professor at over 30 U.S. medical schools and lectures frequently on innovation in health care. In 2018, he was elected to the National Academy of Medicine.
