Hae Mi Choe Named Chief Population Health Officer for Michigan Medicine

Hae Mi Choe, PharmD, associate dean for pharmacy innovations and partnerships, has been named chief population health officer for Michigan Medicine.

In this role, Dr. Choe will lead and collaborate with leadership and staff throughout the health system and the community to develop programs and promote a culture to improve the health of populations and lower the cost of care. She will focus particularly on enabling and strengthening value-based care arrangements as well as innovative partnerships within and outside the University of Michigan.

As interim CPHO since November 2022, she has demonstrated dedication to the opportunities that abound in population health and her skill at building bridges with partners to seize those opportunities.

“Dr. Choe will be the first person with a PharmD to serve in this very important role for Michigan Medicine,” said College of Pharmacy Dean Vicki Ellingrod. “Please join me in congratulating her on this amazing accomplishment!”

This new position is just one of Dr. Choe’s many leadership roles in efforts to apply the expertise of pharmacists to transform healthcare. She has piloted programs to integrate pharmacists into clinical care teams as active co-managers of patients’ chronic conditions.

At the state level, Dr. Choe was also the founding director for Michigan Pharmacists Transforming Care and Quality (MPTCQ), a collaboration between Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM) and Michigan Medicine that embedded pharmacists in direct patient care across more than 20 physician organizations to improve quality and patient outcomes.

As a result of this success, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan executives appointed Dr. Choe as the executive director for the Michigan Institute for Care Management and Transformation (the BCBSM statewide care management program). She is considered a “go to” expert in creating innovative programs with BCBSM. She has been responsible for many quality improvement initiatives across ambulatory care clinics and has developed many strategic programs for care management teams.

In addition to her new role with Michigan Medicine, Dr. Choe will also be formally nominated as the chief executive for the Physician Organization of Michigan, at an upcoming July board meeting. This accountable care organization is dedicated to improving population health through coordinated high-quality care at lower cost.

In all these ways, Dr. Choe is putting her research on improving chronic disease management and care delivery models to work for the direct benefit of patients across Michigan. Her work in all these roles is an example of how pharmacists make a difference in patient care every day.