David R. Hunt, MD, FACS
Medical Officer, Office of Provider Adoption and Support
Office of the Secretary, Office of the National Coordinator
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
Washington, DC

David Hunt served as a Medical Officer at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology when he received the Pete Conrad Global Patient Safety Award for his national contributions to patient safety. A general surgeon and member of the committees for the National Quality Forum Safe Practices and was the expert leader addressing the practices related to surgical site infections.

He currently serves as the Medical Director for National Provider Engagement in the Office of Provider Adoption and Support (OPAS). There he focuses on coordinating and strengthening the policy and operational aspects of ONC programs for clinicians, and on conveying the value proposition of those programs to the clinical community.

At ONC, Dr. Hunt merges years as a practicing surgeon and leader in surgical quality and patient safety with hands-on experience at all levels of information technology, from programmer to systems analyst and software developer. Before joining ONC, from 2002 through 2007, he served at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in Baltimore. There he led the measure development, design, testing, and implementation of the Surgical Care Improvement Project (SCIP), the most extensive surgical quality and safety program in the United States. During that same period, Dr. Hunt also ran the Medicare Patient Safety Monitoring System (MPSMS), a nationwide surveillance project aimed at identifying the rates of specific adverse events within the Medicare population. As a result of his leadership in those programs, he has served on the Safe Practices Consensus Committee of the National Quality Forum since 2005. After receiving a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from the University of Rochester (NY), Dr. Hunt attended Howard University College of Medicine, graduating with a medical degree in 1984. Practicing in both private and academic settings, Dr. Hunt served as a Clinical Assistant Professor of Surgery at Howard University and chairman of surgical peer review at various hospitals in the Washington metropolitan area. He has been a fellow of the American College of Surgeons since 1993.