Richard Bottner

Background

About Richard Bottner

Dr. Richard Bottner currently serves as the Chief Clinical Officer at the Schwartz Center for Compassionate Healthcare, an international non-profit that advances compassion for patients and care teams through research-based strategies and tools including the signature Schwartz Rounds program.With a 20+ year career spanning healthcare, human resources consulting, workforce development, and entrepreneurship, Dr. Bottner brings a diverse array of expertise and experiences to his leadership roles in non-profit, member association, and clinical care settings. A certified PA with clinical experience in academic hospital medicine, addiction medicine, and palliative care, Dr. Bottner is passionate about quality improvement, systems innovation, and applying scientific evidence to improve operations. He has contributed to dozens of peer-reviewed projects and delivered hundreds of lectures on these topics.At the Schwartz Center, Dr. Bottner leads collaborations with healthcare leaders to strengthen programs, provide thought leadership, grow strategic partnerships, and support advances in the compassion sciences. Prior to joining the Schwartz Center, Dr. Bottner served as the Vice President of Clinical Excellence at the Colorado Hospital Association where he led the association’s Center for Clinical Leadership and Excellence, a department focused on improving care across the state through legislative and regulatory advocacy, thought-leadership, and multistakeholder problem-solving.Previously, Dr. Bottner was an Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine at Dell Medical School where he led quality and patient safety initiatives. He was the director of a federally funded program to provide patients with opioid use disorder access to treatment during acute hospitalization. Dr. Bottner also held several leadership positions within the academic medical center and received several awards from the Ascension health system for team-based leadership.Prior to entering the healthcare field, Dr. Bottner started five companies between the ages of 14 and 24. He was a Bloomberg Business Week Top 25 U.S. Entrepreneur Under 25 and received a citation from Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick for Entrepreneurial Excellence. In parallel to this, Dr. Bottner received academy training and worked as an EMT, firefighter, and 911 dispatcher.Dr. Bottner holds a Doctor of Health Administration from MUSC, Masters in PA Studies from Quinnipiac University, and Bachelors in Entrepreneurship from Babson College. He holds faculty appointments at Dell Medical School and Butler University.