About
John Leifer
As a strategist, tactician, operational leader and teacher, John Leifer has excelled at helping hundreds of organizations anticipate and adapt to the many changes that have swept through healthcare over the past three decades.
As a strategist, tactician, operational leader and teacher, John Leifer has excelled at helping hundreds of organizations anticipate and adapt to the many changes that have swept through healthcare over the past three decades. His broad consulting experience includes clients ranging from national health systems to pharmaceutical firms to state government and runs the gamut of major constituents comprising the care delivery and financing system.
Most recently, Leifer stepped away from his traditional consulting role and served as the senior vice president, strategic planning & marketing, at Saint Luke’s Health System (a 10-hospital, Baldrige Award-winning system in the Midwest). Saint Luke’s had been a consulting client of Leifer’s since 1983. Leifer applied his extensive background in healthcare to the formulation and supervision of strategic plans for the health system’s hospitals and product lines. His oversight included strategic planning, regional development, physician marketing, strategic marketing and branding. After a long career in consulting, the experience provided him with invaluable insight and empathy from the client’s perspective. In 2012, eager to once again work with numerous institutions facing complex challenges, Leifer returned to the firm he had founded three decades ago.
Leifer has held faculty positions with both the University of Kansas School of Medicine’s Health Policy and Management Program and the William Allen White School of Journalism. At the Health Policy Program, Leifer served as executive in residence. In 2006, he was awarded the Kansas Health Foundation Excellence in Teaching Award.
Leifer brings a blend of analytic and creative thinking to his work, along with a passion for writing and communication. In the mid-1980s, he founded and published The Leifer Report, a healthcare publication that featured contributors ranging from President Bill Clinton to Newt Gingrich. He is a frequent contributor to a range of publications and has been profiled through the years in several prominent magazines, including Money and Fortune.
Leifer attended Duke University and the University of Kansas for undergraduate studies, and the University of Pennsylvania for graduate school. He is keenly interested in health policy, population health management, and health outcomes.
When not working, Leifer enjoys hiking with his family, along with photography, a passion he developed as a team photographer for the Kansas City Royals baseball team while in high school.
Healthcare Books by John Leifer
2015
After You Hear It’s Cancer
A Guide to Navigating the Difficult Journey Ahead
When your doctor utters the word “cancer”, life changes in an instant. It is a moment when time stands still, a moment laden with anxiety and uncertainty. A new journey is beginning, and it is one for which you are likely ill prepared.
2014
The Myths of Modern Medicine
The ALARMING Truth About American Health Care
The American health care system is terminally ill. It is astonishingly expensive, remarkably variable in quality, and incapable of stemming the rising tide of chronic illness in our population.
The Leifer Group Blog
Read the most recent posts & articles from John Leifer and The Leifer Group.
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After I Heard the Words, “It’s Cancer”
As the author of After You Hear It’s Cancer: A Guide to Surviving the Difficult Journey Ahead, I thought I understood the magnitude of the impact of a cancer diagnosis on patients. After all, I had written about it at length – describing that instant when one hears...
How to Become an Empowered Health Care Consumer
This video introduces a soon-to-be produced series of educational health care videos designed to facilitate consumer/patient empowerment. https://youtu.be/SkJpIif0IaU
Does a Prayer A Day Keep Illness at Bay?
Research into the impact of religious and spiritual beliefs on our health continues. When we are sick, we rely on our physicians to heal us. And for good reason: they possess the knowledge, tools, drugs, and procedures to conquer many maladies. But not all illnesses...