Phillip E. Rodgers, M.D., FAAHPM, has been appointed chair of the Department of Family Medicine and the George A. Dean, M.D., Chair of Family Medicine in the Medical School, effective Sept. 1, 2023. The provost provided interim approval of this appointment, and it will be reported at the September 2023 Board of Regents meeting.
Rodgers earned his M.D. at the Medical College of Ohio and completed family medicine residency training at the University of Michigan. As faculty here over the past 25 years, his practice and teaching have included the full spectrum of family medicine, from obstetric and newborn care through palliative and end-of-life care, with important contributions to diverse family medicine priorities including adult inpatient care, migrant family health, cardiovascular medicine, gender-affirming care and office-based procedures. He has also served in numerous departmental leadership roles, most recently as director of faculty development and as service chief. At the institutional level he has served on the Executive Committee on Clinical Affairs and the Medical School Executive Committee.
In 2005, working with nursing, social work and hospital leadership, Rodgers became founding director of the U-M Palliative Care Program. Starting with small consultation teams for seriously ill hospitalized adults and children, Palliative Care at Michigan Medicine has grown into thriving adult and pediatric palliative care programs that provide interdisciplinary inpatient, outpatient and community-based care, deliver robust interprofessional education to learners at all levels, and foster emerging research portfolios. This growth has been enabled by highly collaborative leadership across the departments of Family Medicine, Internal Medicine and Pediatrics working with Michigan Medicine partners and leaders from the schools of Nursing, Social Work and Pharmacy.
He is a leading national expert in payment and care delivery innovation in palliative care, and he has provided substantial leadership and expertise to numerous national stakeholders including the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, the Palliative Care Quality Collaborative, the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, among others. His work has influenced important policy changes that have improved access to care by patients with serious illness and their caregivers.
A professor of family medicine and internal medicine in the Medical School, Rodgers became the first faculty member of any U-M department to be named fellow in the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, and he has since been recognized with several other national awards. He also was the first Department of Family Medicine faculty member to receive the Dean’s Award for Community Service.
