Anthony L. Suchman, MD, MA, FACP is an organizational consultant and practicing physician, and Clinical Professor of Medicine and Psychiatry at the University of Rochester. His work focuses on partnership process across all levels of healthcare. After earning his BA (psychology) and MD degrees at Cornell University, he completed a residency in Internal Medicine and fellowships in General Internal Medicine (clinical epidemiology and health services research) and Behavioral and Psychosocial Medicine (mind/body interactions and medical interviewing), all at the University of Rochester. Dr. Suchman studied patient-clinician relationships, medical decision-making, physician satisfaction, and the spiritual dimensions of medical care. Through his teaching and writing (more than 80 articles and the book Partnerships in Healthcare: Transforming Relational Process) he has become a leading proponent of a partnership-based clinical approach known as Relationship-Centered Care. 

 

After 15 years of academic pursuits, Dr. Suchman became interested in healthcare organizations, particularly how the values expressed in administrative processes and in the behavior of leaders affect processes of care. To explore the potential of integrated healthcare systems to engage patients as active partners and provide coordinated, effective and humane care, he helped to found the Highland Physicians Organization and was its first Executive Director, and later helped to establish the Strong Health Managed Care Organization, serving as its first CEO and Chief Medical Officer.   He subsequently earned an MA degree in Organizational Change, studying with Ralph Stacey at the University of Hertfordshire’s Complexity and Management Centre. 

 

Currently Dr. Suchman is working with clinicians, administrators and board members in health care organizations in the US and internationally to advance the practice of Relationship-Centered Care. He chaired the board of the American Academy on Physician and Patient for 8 years and is active in the Plexus Institute. He is a co-founder of Relationship Centered Health Care and the Healthcare Consultancy of McArdle Ramerman & Company. He and his wife, artist Lynne Feldman, have two grown children. He enjoys folk music, yoga, books, computers, art, travel and hiking – especially in the Finger Lakes region of New York and the White Mountains of New Hampshire and Maine.