Marshall "Tom" Rockwell, a physician and mathematician who helped launch RAND Health in the late 1960s, served as its first director, and played a key role in a pioneering health insurance study at RAND, has died. He was 86.
"Tom Rockwell once said he was among the many who had benefited from RAND's willingness to take a chance on young researchers trying to work on new ideas," said Jason Matheny, president and chief executive officer of RAND. "He was a shining example of the rewards of that philosophy. Tom was just 30 when he was asked to helm and develop health research at RAND, laying the foundation for what became a major research division."
The RAND Corporation committed $25,000 in 1969 to establish what was originally known as the Health Research Program at a time when policymakers were vigorously debating how health care should be financed. Rockwell had joined RAND the previous year.
By 1971, Rockwell was part of a small team of RAND researchers who launched the Health Insurance Experiment, regarded as the largest health policy study in U.S. history. Fieldwork for the experiment was conducted between 1974 and 1982 and involved randomly assigning 7,700 people from around the country to different insurance plans with different levels of cost-sharing. The experiment's conclusions encouraged the restructuring of private insurance and helped increase the stature of managed care in the United States.
As of 1976, the Health Research Program had 60 researchers who worked on more than 20 projects in such areas as national health policy, health care delivery systems, and the use of technology in health research and care.
Rockwell's personal research for RAND included relatively early investigations into the application of computers in health care delivery, in 1974, and the use of computer-based information systems for hospital emergency departments, in 1977.
After leaving RAND in the late 1970s, Rockwell created one of the largest emergency-physician group practices in the country and in 1982 cofounded the Cable Health Network, which became a founding pillar of the Lifetime television network.
Rockwell often credited RAND with laying the groundwork for his later success in the private sector. He funded the Rockwell Policy Analysis prize to encourage and reward innovating thinking among RAND researchers and "to try in a small way to pass on to a new generation some of the blessings that RAND's faith in me helped bring into my own life," he once said.
The Rockwell prize was awarded for several years beginning in 2009 and funded path-breaking RAND-initiated research. The inaugural Rockwell prize resulted in a project called "Delivery Pathways for Genetic Testing Interventions for Common Diseases." Another prize funded research on the deradicalization of Islamist extremists.
More recently, Rockwell was a principal of Cyrcon Builders, which specializes in the construction of medical facilities. The firm's clients include the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center.
Marshall A. Rockwell Jr. was born in 1939 in Los Angeles. He earned his bachelor's degree in mathematics from Walla Walla College in 1960 and his medical degree from the University of Southern California in 1969.