National Medical Fellowships (NMF) welcomes to its Board of Directors
Lloyd H. Dean, Chief Executive Emeritus of CommonSpirit Health.

Lloyd H. Dean has worked to improve and expand access to health care for more than 30 years.

Dean stated, “One thing we know for sure is having competent and caring physicians who are both accessible and available, particularly in and from communities facing the greatest challenges, is essential.

“I believe National Medical Fellowships has the compelling voices, strong capabilities, and impressive leadership qualities to help this nation effectively address this deficit.”

A nationally recognized business leader and policy advisor, Dean joins NMF’s Board of Directors following his storied career in health care utilizing innovative partnerships and empathetic practices to improve patient and physician health nationwide.

One of nine siblings, Dean was born in Alabama and raised in Muskegon, Michigan. “I saw my family and community suffer in an environment where access to health care was extremely rare and difficult, and I always told myself I’d try to change that. Education is one of the most powerful tools we have to move out of communities like the one I grew up in, so I intended to become a school superintendent,” he said.

After earning his undergraduate degree in sociology, Dean became a junior high school teacher while earning his graduate degree in educational leadership from Western Michigan University (WMU).

Having the opportunity to interact with the Board of WMU, he learned how each board member became business leaders.

As a result of a lunch with five of the top Upjohn Company executives, Dean’s professional trajectory was changed forever. They said, “People talk about you in this community and we were wondering if you’d consider a career change.”

Dean noted, “Joining the Upjohn Company was one of the best decisions I ever made. They owned the largest home health company in the country and were doing work in communities just like the one I grew up in. That was very meaningful to me, because I am passionate about providing resources to those without access. And, like education, the pharmaceuticals industry has the power to impact and influence communities via health.”

Dean rose through UpJohn’s ranks from national contract manager to Upjohn’s Health Care Services Division national director of marketing for the U.S. and Canada.

Dean then ascended to the position of chief operating officer at Advocate Health Care.

In 2000 he joined Catholic Healthcare West/Dignity Health as its president/CEO.

Under Dean’s leadership, Dignity Health grew to 41 hospitals and more than 400 care centers, which included neighborhood hospitals, urgent care facilities, surgery and imaging centers, home health, and primary care clinics, many of which provided medical care regardless of patient background or financial circumstances.

In 2019, Dean helped lead the affiliation of Dignity Health and Catholic Health Initiatives into becoming CommonSpirit Health, a $33.3 billion collection of more than 140 hospitals, 1,500 care sites and 150,000 employees across 22 states.

Serving as CEO over the next four years, Dean helped guide CommonSpirit Health through the COVID-19 pandemic while providing more than $5 billion in charity care, community benefit, and unreimbursed government programs, and headlining industry-wide calls to action on public health issues such as racism and gun violence.

“The courageous voice is critically important. Every human being has similar desires in life – they want to be healthy, take care of their families, and enjoy safe and affordable access to care, education, and opportunities.”

“When those resources are not available because of legislative, fiscal, or other geopolitical reasons, I’ve seen that as a calling to increase my advocacy. I cannot sit on the sidelines. I’ve got to make sure the people making decisions understand the impacts of their decisions, or lack thereof.”

Dean sites one of his proudest achievements as being part of CommonSpirit Health’s $115 million 10-year partnership with Morehouse School of Medicine with the objective to help train more culturally competent physicians across the country with new facilities and community-focused graduate medical programs.

“In the end, no matter how technologically advanced medicine becomes, health care will always be about people helping people, and we know that patients listen to physicians, follow treatments, and take their medications more often if they have physicians who look like them and understand them culturally,” he added.

Dean has participated in the World Economic Forum, CleanMed Conference, United Nation Climate Change Conference and has worked with the last four U.S. Presidential Administrations.

In 2020, Modern Healthcare honored Dean with its “Top 25 Minority Leaders in Healthcare Luminary Designation” and has consistently made Modern Healthcare’s “100 Most Influential People in Healthcare.”

“We must engage with and work alongside others to help keep the wheels turning smoothly toward our collective missions. We can all learn from community-based organizations who have developed innovative and creative methodologies of delivering care, collaborating with practitioners, and engaging with patients.”

In 2022 in honor of Dean’s continued emphasis on evidence linking the healing powers of empathy, compassion, and patient outcomes, CommonSpirit Health launched the Lloyd H. Dean Institute for Human Kindness and Health Justice in San Francisco, CA. Its focus is on community-based challenges such as low-income legal services, resources for the unhoused, and school supply drives.

Dean continues to serve as a strategic advisor for health companies working toward improving issues of holistic wellbeing, on state-appointed commissions focused not only on health workforce development, but also on increasing cost-effective and convenient access to community health resources, and with investors seeking to use capital and investment dollars to change and sustain lives.

Dean stressed, “The greatest things ever accomplished were not done so by individuals, but rather through the power of teams.”

Lloyd considers himself blessed to join the Board of NMF saying, “The mission is to provide access to funds and opportunities for clinicians and other health care practitioners to serve others, while being connected to a community of professionals on similar journeys, and very few organizations are poised to sustain such a mission at the scale NMF can.”

Dean also recognizes the rising challenges and frustrations of health care practitioners constantly being asked to do more with less.

“What I would tell all NMF scholars and alumni is that, especially when it means pursuing your own dreams, you cannot step away from the importance of what you’re doing. In many cases, you are the last bastion of hope for people.”

“That is why you must surround yourselves with others in this journey to take the best care of yourselves that you can. Look for opportunities at NMF and other entities where you can listen and engage with others also wanting to solve problems.

“There are folks who want to invest in you and your dreams, but they may not understand what the environment is like, what the impacts are, and what is really needed to create change.  

“The things we succeed in are those in which we’re passionate about. It’s not just what we do, but how we do it, and if we focus on the voices of those we’re serving, we’re more likely to be able to create lasting impact.”