John Spertus is a cardiologist and the Lauer/Missouri Endowed Chair and Professor of Medicine at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where he serves as Clinical Director of Outcomes Research at Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute (MAHI). He is a graduate of UCSF Medical School and completed his internal medicine, cardiology and health services training at the University of Washington. He has served on numerous national committees for the American College of Cardiology (ACC), American Heart Association (AHA), American Medical Association (AMA), National Quality Forum (NQF), Medicare and United Healthcare (UHC). His research activities led to his induction into the American Society of Clinical Investigation in 2006 and the Association of University Cardiologists in 2018, his receipt of the AHA Quality of Care and Outcomes Research Council’s Distinguished Achievement Award, being named by Thompson Reuters as one of the most influential scientists in the world in 2014 and 2015, named among their list of highly-cited authors in 2016 and 2017, and awarded the AHA QCOR Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015. He founded the Cardiovascular Outcomes Research Consortium and CV Outcomes, a non-profit corporation dedicated to advancing healthcare quality and outcomes research in cardiovascular disease and Health Outcomes Sciences, a biotechnology start-up to support the implementation of evidence-based, personalized medicine throughout the country. Dr. Spertus and his collaborators have published over 750 peer-reviewed articles and hold 6 patents.

Dr. Spertus has devoted his career to improving the quality and patient-centeredness of care. His research focuses on methods for assessing patients’ health outcomes, measuring healthcare quality, and the use of information technology to guide medical decision-making based on risk-prediction models so that treatment can be safer, more cost-effective, evidence-based and patient-centered. He developed the Seattle Angina Questionnaire (SAQ), and the Kansas City Cardiomyopathy Questionnaire (KCCQ), which have both been translated into over 95 languages each and have become the gold standards for measuring patients’ symptoms, function and quality of life in coronary artery disease and heart failure. The KCCQ was the first patient-reported outcomes measure to ever be endorsed by the CDRH branch of the FDA as a Certified Outcome Assessment. He has also developed the Peripheral Artery Questionnaire for patients with peripheral artery disease. While he collaborates with basic scientists to illuminate the prognostic significance of genetics and biomarkers on cardiovascular outcomes, his primary focus in the translational research enterprise is at the interface of patient care.