After 31 years of transformative leadership of the Division of General Medicine, Dr. Larry McMahon will step down from his role as Division Chief upon a new successor. Dr. McMahon was appointed by then Chair Bill Kelley in January 1988 when the Division of General Medicine was relatively small with little research activity. His co-appointment as faculty in Health Management & Policy in the School of Public Health proved salient to a blueprint he created to forge health services research in his Division. This included the participation and growth of faculty at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System, and then the University of Michigan, when he and Dr. Joel Howell led the enormously successful and transformative effort for our institution to be awarded as a Robert Wood Johnson (RWJ) Clinical Scholars Program (now the National Clinician Scholars Program) site after a national competition. It would be an understatement to say how the RWJ Program has seeded the growth of health services research for many clinical disciplines of the medical school, including internal medicine, surgery, urology, and others. The Program attracted young scholars, many of whom later became faculty at Michigan in multiple clinical departments. This training foundation along with recruitment helped set the stage for the later formation of the Institute for Healthcare Policy & Innovation.
Dr. McMahon has literally recruited several hundred scholars and clinicians during his tenure as Chief. This includes nearly the entire health services research group as well as clinicians through multiple waves of expansions to serve our patients in primary care and hospital medicine. In 2003, he recruited Dr. Scott Flanders to develop the hospitalist program, for which was the forerunner to the Division of Hospital Medicine that was inaugurated in 2017. His vision on how hospital medicine would need to be shaped academically has allowed the Division of Hospital Medicine to be the best in the country today. Additionally, primary care is highly ranked for the University of Michigan in large part due to the academic and clinical activities of the Division of General Medicine. Even with the separation of Hospital Medicine from General Medicine, Dr. McMahon continues to oversee the largest division in the Department of Internal Medicine due to the tremendous growth to meet the expansive strategy for primary care for the institution.
Dr. McMahon received his BS in Chemistry from Carnegie-Mellon University, an MPH from Yale School of Medicine, and his MD from the University of Vermont. After his residency in internal medicine at Strong Memorial Hospital, Larry completed a GI fellowship at Yale. During his GI fellowship, he was in the Health Systems Management Group of Yale’s School of Organization and Management, and was in the National Fund for Medical Education in the Department of Medicine at Yale. After his training, he was recruited to the University of Michigan and rose to the ranks to full Professor of Internal Medicine (UMMS) and Health Management & Policy (SPH).
Dr. McMahon continues his research on the variations of health care use and utilization. He continues with AHRQ R01 funding as PI, and has published over 127 manuscripts and articles, including in JAMA, Annals of Internal Medicine, American Journal of Public Health, American Journal of Managed Care, New England Journal of Medicine, among others. He has mentored multiple RWJ scholars as well as fellows, and continues to mentor trainees. He is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, received the Department of Internal Medicine Chairman’s award for Outstanding Service, and the Association of Chiefs and Leaders of General Internal Medicine (ACLGIM) Chief’s Recognition Award. Larry recently served as President of ACLGIM. In addition to his longstanding role as Division Chief, Larry has provided key service to the institution, including serving as interim Chair of Internal Medicine, and Program Director of Internal Medicine’s Residency Program. He has served on numerous institutional committees, most notably the University of Michigan Medical Group Board (formerly known as the Faculty Group Practice). As a practicing clinician, Larry constantly is surveying changes in the primary care landscape, and has advocated for modernizing the institutional approach for primary care.
The Department will commence an internal review of the Division of General Medicine, and form a Search Advisory Committee to name Larry’s successor. Larry will continue as Division chief until the new Division Chief is recruited, then thereafter continue as a faculty member in the Division of General Medicine.
