Susan Freeman

Susan L. Freeman, MD, MS, FACPE, FACE

A healthcare executive and educator for 25 years, Dr. Freeman is the President of Creative HealthCare Initiatives, LLC, focused on addressing fundamental and infrastructural challenges in healthcare through strategic transformation, education, and innovation. She is teaching strategic planning for the AAPL.

Prior to her recent move to Arizona, Dr. Freeman was Provost and Senior Vice President, and the Robert C. and Naomi T. Borwell Presidential Professor at Rush University in Chicago. Serving as the chief operating officer of the university, she orchestrated the production of a comprehensive university strategic plan, as well as the integration of new academic business alliances and strategies with the Rush University System for Health. An advocate for workforce development and social justice, Dr. Freeman was a co-founder and co-director of the Rush Institute for Health Equity, advancing work on decreasing disparities in health outcomes.

Prior to her position in Chicago, Dr. Freeman was the Chief Medical Officer, Vice Dean of Health Care Systems and the founding President of the Temple Center for Population Health at Temple University and Temple University Health System in Philadelphia. In addition to broad operations and strategic planning oversight, she taught health system science and population health at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, and at Thomas Jefferson University, and developed curricula and master’s degree courses for both. Under Dr. Freeman’s leadership, Temple was the recipient of several grants to improve health care in North Philadelphia, affording her the opportunity to work with state and local government agencies to create strategic models and plans for the delivery of high value care, including work with the Pennsylvania Innovation Model Population Health Workgroup.

Dr. Freeman is a reviewer for Population Health Management and the Journal of HealthCare Quality. Recent regional and national presentations include strategic integration of clinical and business imperatives in population health; value-based health care delivery; the implications of health care reform on safety net hospitals; transforming ambulatory care to meet the value equation; confronting the opioid epidemic; and linking health systems science to undergraduate and graduate medical education. She has authored papers on thyroid disease, diabetes, consumer driven health plans, patient value, the complexities of addressing food insecurity in an urban population, behavioral health in the primary care setting, and health system transformation.

A graduate of the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, Dr. Freeman completed both her residency in internal medicine and fellowship in endocrinology and metabolism at the Mayo Clinic Graduate School of Medicine, Rochester, Minnesota. She holds a Master of Science degree in Preventive and Administration Medicine from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Dr. Freeman is a Fellow of the American Association of Physician Leadership and the American Association of Clinical Endocrinology.