With American primary care at a crossroads of high demand, rising patient complexity and workforce shortages, a new leader has taken the reins of one of the nation’s oldest, largest and most respected academic departments focused on caring for patients from birth to the end of life. 

Phillip Rodgers, M.D., was formally approved today as the new George A. Dean, M.D. Chair of Family Medicine by the University of Michigan Board of Regents, effective September 1. 

A 25-year veteran of the department’s faculty, and national leader in the field of palliative care, Rodgers will lead a team of more than 110 physicians and hundreds of staff, residents and fellows. 

He plans to complete the effort begun under his predecessor Philip Zazove, M.D., to move the department’s clinical care into a primarily population-based payment model, leading the nation in transforming primary care through a team-based approach called the patient-centered medical home. 

He also plans to support the development of core areas of research in the department, which ranks 16th in the nation in funding from the National Institutes of Health. And he aims to work with education leaders to develop a fully interprofessional training model to help medical students, resident physicians, clinical fellows train alongside learners in nursing, social work and other fields. The Family Medicine residency program is ranked 17th in the country by Doximity.  

Rodgers cites as his roadmap the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s 2021 report “Implementing High Quality Primary Care: Rebuilding the Foundation of Health Care.”

“I have pursued my career in academic family medicine with the enduring belief that individual, family and community health are fully interdependent, and that our greatest imperative as health professionals is to advance all three comprehensively, collaboratively, and creatively,” said Rodgers. 

Rodgers earned his medical degree at the Medical College of Ohio and completed family medicine residency training at U-M, joining the faculty afterward in 1998.
In addition to providing care ranging from newborn delivery and outpatient procedures to gender-affirming care and primary care for migrant farm workers, he also served for more than a decade as staff physician at Arbor Hospice, which gave him its Distinguished Service Award. He also was the Medical School’s inaugural recipient of the Dean’s Award for Community Service. 

In 2005, working with nursing, social work and hospital leadership, Rodgers became founding director of the U-M Palliative Care Program. Starting with small consultation teams for seriously ill hospitalized adults and children, palliative care at Michigan Medicine has grown into thriving adult and pediatric programs. 

Rodgers now serves as co-director of the adult palliative care service, as well as serving national organizations focused on improving end-of-life care. He was the first U-M faculty member of to be named a fellow in the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, and received the organization’s Gerald H. Holman Distinguished Service Award. He also received a Sojourns Leadership Award from the palliative-care-focused Cambia Health Foundation.

Rodgers is a member of the U-M Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation, and the Center for Healthcare Outcomes and Policy.

For 45 years, U-M’s Department of Family Medicine has provided patient care at University of Michigan Health ambulatory care centers throughout the greater Ann Arbor area, and inpatient units at University Hospital, C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital and the Birth Center at Von Voigtlander Women’s Hospital, and St. Joseph Mercy Chelsea Hospital. The department’s teams offer specialized services for Japanese- and Spanish-language speakers, members of the Deaf community, and people with disabilities, obesity, vulvodynia and sports-related issues as well as people seeking care that integrates complementary and traditional medicine approaches.

The department’s research includes programs in behavioral health, cancer screening and prevention, clinical informatics, disability health, global health, integrative medicine, mixed methods research, preventive medicine and sexual and reproductive health. 

The department runs a required clerkship for all U-M Medical School students, and an elective in disability health, as well as a three-year residency program, a joint residency with the School of Public Health, and more than a dozen fellowships for family physicians who have completed residency, in areas ranging from sleep medicine and geriatrics to reproductive medicine and integrative medicine.