Donald Lighter, MD, MBA, FAAP - Director, The Institute for Healthcare Quality Research and Education

Dr. Donald E. Lighter currently serves as the Associate Medical Director for Clinical Outcomes Programs for the Shriners Hospitals for Children, where he is responsible for leading the design and implementation of programs to evaluate and improve the care of children in the Shriners system.  Shriners’ unique hospital system provides free care for children with serious orthopaedic abnormalities and burns.  After finishing his medical degree at St. Louis University Medical School, Dr. Lighter completed a pediatric residency and practiced general pediatrics in both private practice and academic settings for over twenty-five years.  Dr. Lighter’s experience in managed care has spanned nearly twenty years, having led the formation of two IPAs and three HMOs.  Over the past ten years, Dr. Lighter has worked both with commercial and Medicaid HMOs, and presently he is Director at The Institute for Healthcare Research and Education and a founder of CyberCE, Inc., an online educational consulting company.  Additionally, Dr. Lighter is a professor and a member of the core faculty for The University of Tennessee’s Physicians’ Executive MBA program, an innovative curriculum that relies heavily on the Internet to provide didactic material for physicians working toward a Masters in Business Administration degree.  He also serves as a Senior Examiner in the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Program.