Dr. John B. Chessare has a clear memory of sitting in the library during his freshman year at Boston College, “writing a five-page paper on a five-line poem” while his roommates were at a football game.
He was barely an adult, but he already knew he wanted to be a doctor. Still, he had ambitiously overloaded his schedule with courses that wouldn’t help him get into medical school, and his grades suffered because of it. “I had, essentially, cooked myself,” said Chessare, CEO of the Greater Baltimore Medical Center in Towson.
He didn’t have the GPA to get into medical school, at least not in America. Instead, Chessare, whose grandparents emigrated from Italy, enrolled in medical school in Rome. There, he played semiprofessional basketball, learned a new language and — most importantly — gained an international perspective on medicine, which he still credits with influencing his views on the challenges faced by the American health care system.
“We have the best-trained people in the world, and they work really hard, but we do not have the best health care system,” Chessare said. “It lets our people down every day, and now is so costly. The largest source of bankruptcy in the country is medical bankruptcy.
“It doesn’t have to be that way. We can easily serve all Americans better and save money,” he said, “but we have to let go, take a deep breath and redesign the system.” Chessare, a pediatrician by training, has been in charge of GBMC for more tha.