Newswise — Bethesda, MD – Mr. Lawrence S. Lewin, a highly respected and dedicated member of the Board of Regents of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU) and founder of The Lewin Group, died on Sunday, April 29, after a lengthy illness. He was 74.
“USU has suffered a tremendous loss,” said President Charles L. Rice, M.D. “Mr. Lewin’s strong leadership, insight and wise counsel were an invaluable asset to the University and he will truly be missed.”
‘Larry’ Lewin was born in 1938 in New York City. He earned an A.B. degree from Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar. Mr. Lewin also served as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps.
In 1970, he founded The Lewin Group and remained its President and CEO through three acquisitions until his planned resignation in December 1999. He first entered the health policy field in 1969 as a Vice Chair (Management) of the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare’s Task Force on Medicaid. Over the ensuing 40+ years, he directed a wide range of projects in health policy and finance, academic medicine, public and private health insurance, technology and market assessment of medical devices and pharmaceutical products, strategic visioning and planning, and health systems management and governance. He conducted nearly 100 workshops and strategic planning conferences for a wide variety of health care executives and organizations.
A substantial portion of Mr. Lewin’s work focused on the consequences of shortfalls in our current system of financing health care. He directed studies of both public insurance (especially Medicaid) for a number of state governments, and of the private insurance system, particularly as it affects access to care and the viability of safety net clinics and hospitals. He also conducted the seminal research comparing non-profit and investor-owned hospitals. This research also explicated the cost-shift phenomenon so critical to understanding how health care for the uninsured is financed.
While CEO of The Lewin Group, he directed the firm’s efforts to model comprehensive health insurance proposals. This model (The Health Benefits Simulation Model) has been extensively used by numerous states, private entities (e.g. SEIU) and elements of the federal government. He helped develop and model health insurance proposals for three presidential candidates; and in 1995, he and his colleagues at The Lewin Group conducted an extensive and widely publicized study of President Clinton’s Health Security Plan Proposal.
He left The Lewin Group in December 1999 and subsequently, as an Executive Consultant, assisted senior healthcare executives, foundations, and organizations in strategic decision-making, program improvement, and executive coaching. He focused his attention on clinical and technology effectiveness, the nation’s public health infrastructure, health promotion, and the challenge of managing collaborative organizations and programs in both the academic and clinical realms.
Mr. Lewin served on a number of corporate boards including: H&Q Healthcare and Life Sciences Funds NYSE (which he chaired), Intermountain Healthcare whose Information Systems Board Committee he chaired from1993 to 2007. He was a member of the National Commission for Prevention Priorities and served as a member of the year-long Congressionally-mandated DoD Task Force on the Future of Military Health Care. He also served as a member of Pfizer’s MRSA Advisory Committee, and was a member of the International Advisory Committee for Brookdale’s Smokler Center in Jerusalem. He was a founding member of the Association for Health Services Research (now Academy Health), and a Board Member of the National Association of Social Insurance.
He was elected to the Institute of Medicine/National Academies in 1984, served eight years as an elected member of the IOM Council and in 2004 was awarded the IOM’s Adam Yarmolinsky Medal for Distinguished Service. Mr. Lewin served as contract staff director for the IOM’s first study in 1972-03 – The Cost of Educating Health Professionals. In 1989-90, he chaired the IOM’s study on Drug Treatment and was a steering committee member of the IOM study on The Future of Academic Medicine, and in 2008-2009 chaired the IOM Committee “America’s Uninsured Crisis: Consequences for Health and Health Care.” He also served as a reviewer on several IOM reports, as a member of the IOM’s Membership Committee, and as the Council’s liaison to the Health Services Board.
Mr. Lewin was appointed to the USU Board of Regents by the Secretary of Defense in 2009. As such, he provided professional guidance needed to move the University’s F. Edward Hébert School of Medicine curriculum to a new model of physician preparation, advance the current master’s degree advanced practice nursing programs to the doctoral level, and integrate the University into the new Academic Health Center. In addition, Mr. Lewin was a key resource in providing guidance for USU’s master’s degree program in Health Care Administration and Policy. He was presented with the University’s Distinguished Service Medal in 2012.
He is survived by his wife, Marion E. Lewin, and four sons.
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