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Biography

J. Richard Gaintner was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He received his B.A. in 1958 from Lehigh University and his M.D. in 1962 from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Gaintner was a captain in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, serving as an internist at U.S. Army Hospital in Fort Carson, Colorado, and as assistant chief of staff at the 85th Evacuation Hospital in Qui Nhon, Vietnam. From 1966 to 1967, he was a fellow in hematology at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, after which he joined the staff of John Dempsey Hospital at the University of Connecticut. Gaintner continued to work on hospital and medical school faculties in Connecticut until 1977, when he returned to the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine as associate dean for administration. In 1981, he was named vice president and deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Under his leadership, ties between the hospital and school of medicine were strengthened. Gaintner left Johns Hopkins in 1983 to assume the office of president and chief executive officer of the Albany Medical Center. In 1989, he went to Boston and joined the faculty at Harvard as professor of medicine. At the same time, Gaintner became president and chief executive officer of New England Deaconess Hospital, a post he held until 1994. While in Boston, he served as president of several health networks. From 1997 to 2001, Gaintner was chief executive officer of Shands HealthCare and clinical professor at the University of Florida College of Medicine.

Scope and Content

The J. Richard Gaintner Collection spans Gaintner’s years as associate dean for administration of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. It includes correspondence, administrative records, committee records, reports, and articles. Planning documents for the school of nursing are included, such as records from a nursing education feasibility study (1979), the steering committee for the nursing school, and the proposal for a nursing education night school. Administrative records include planning reports and studies on the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, as well as records from the Committee on the Coordination of the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions.

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