Paul Bernard Convery, MD, MMM: a conversation with the editor.

Proc (Bayl Univ Med Cent) 2006;19:364–373 P aul Convery (Figure 1) is senior vice president and chief medical officer for the Baylor Health Care System (BHCS). He joined the inner circle of BHCS in February 2006, having previously served as executive vice president and chief medical officer of SSM Health Care in St. Louis. SSM Health Care was the first health care winner of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. Dr. Convery was with SSM Health Care from 1999 to 2006. In 2005, he served as interim president of 2 hospitals in St. Louis. Prior to joining SSM Health Care, Dr. Convery was the medical director of Southwest Medical Center, a large multispecialty group practice in St. Louis. He has experience in managed care and has served on both a hospital’s and health system’s board of directors. He practiced internal medicine for 22 years. In addition to his medical degree, he has a master’s degree in medical management from Tulane University. Dr. Convery is a splendid addition to the Baylor top hierarchy. He has lectured extensively on the topics of developing physician leadership; improving patient safety and clinical quality in health care; implementing the Malcolm Baldrige process for organizational improvement in health care; and transitioning to electronic health records. He is also a very nice guy, and it was a pleasure to have the opportunity to ask him some questions about himself and his career. I think he will have a major impact on BHCS, and I highly compliment Joel Allison and Gary Brock for bringing this outstanding man to the Baylor community. William Clifford Roberts, MD (hereafter, Roberts): Dr. Convery, I appreciate your willingness to talk to me and, therefore, to the readers of the Baylor University Medical Center (BUMC) Proceedings. May we start by your discussing your early life, some of your early memories, your parents, and your siblings? Paul Bernard Convery, MD, MMM (hereafter, Convery): I was born in Springfield, Illinois, and lived there until I went away to college (Figure 2). I was an only child. My father, William B. Convery, was a printer all his life. He grew up in a very poor family and had to go to work full-time after finishing the eighth grade. He worked initially as a printer apprentice, and later he became a printer and did that until he retired at age 64. He was a Linotype operator. He ran one of those machines the size of a room that would take bars of lead and melt them into cast type, and then he would set the type. When the machines became obsolete he retired. He literally worked on the same machine for 50 years. (My son works in the information technology field and, of course, in that world, things change by the day almost.) My father got very good at his work. When I was growing up, he was the only real expert in Springfield at taking these machines apart and putting them back together, and he made a very good living doing that. It is incredible to think of somebody living in the first half of the 20th century and literally doing the same type of work for 50 years! The last 20 years or so my father worked for a company in Springfield that published textbooks. He would read all the print and type it in and set it. Over the years, he became inPaul Bernard Convery, MD, MMM: a conversation with the editor