Healthcare >> CEO Interviews >> September 14, 2001
JOHN W. ROWE, MD, is Chairman and CEO of Aetna Inc. Prior to joining
Aetna in September 2000, Dr. Rowe served as President and Chief
Executive Officer of Mount Sinai NYU Health. With an annual budget of
$1.8 billion, a staff of 4,000 physicians and approximately 14,000 total
employees, Mount Sinai NYU Health is one of the nation's largest
healthcare organizations. Prior to the Mount Sinai NYU Health merger,
Dr. Rowe was President of The Mount Sinai Hospital and the Mount Sinai
School of Medicine in New York City. He serves as Clinical Professor of
Medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine Before joining Mount
Sinai in 1988, Dr. Rowe was a Professor of Medicine and the founding
Director of the Division on Aging at Harvard Medical School, and Chief
of Gerontology at Boston's Beth Israel Hospital. He has authored over
200 scientific publications, mostly in the physiology of the aging
process, and a leading textbook of geriatric medicine. Dr. Rowe has
received many honors and awards for his research and health policy
efforts regarding care of the elderly. Dr. Rowe was Director of the
MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Aging and is co-
author, with Robert Kahn, PhD, of Successful Aging (Pantheon, 1998). He
served on the Board of Governors of the American Board of Internal
Medicine and as President of the Gerontological Society of America, and
is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of
Sciences and the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission. Profile
TWST: Could you give us a brief historical sketch and an overview ofAetna?
Dr. Rowe: Aetna has, over the past several years, converted from a
multi-line international insurance and financial