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. 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, American Heart Association, American Medical Association, National Quality Forum, Medicare and United Healthcare. 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 in 2013, QCOR’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015 and being named a Distinguished Scientist in 2018 by the AHA. Dr. Spertus and his collaborators have published >1000 peer-reviewed articles and he holds 9 patents.

Dr. Spertus has devoted his career to improving the quality, equity, and patient-centeredness of care. He developed the Seattle Angina Questionnaire (SAQ), and the Kansas City Cardiomyopathy Questionnaire (KCCQ), which have become the gold standards for measuring patients’ symptoms, function and quality of life in coronary artery disease and heart failure. The SAQ and KCCQ have become critical outcomes in clinical trials, tools for patient management, components of disease management programs, methods for quality assessment/improvement, and foundational components for supporting patients in shared decision making. The ability of physicians to base care on predictive models, and to inform patients’ understanding of treatment options and their predicted outcomes, is a paradigmatic shift in care that has the potential to improve its value to patients and society.