The Blackstone Group has appointed Dr Robert Galvin as chief executive officer of Equity Healthcare.

Equity Healthcare is Blackstone's health management programme which aims to improve quality and contain costs in providing healthcare to the employees and their families of private equity portfolio companies.

Currently Equity Healthcare encompasses 34 companies, the combined healthcare spending of which exceeds USD2bn annually.

Before joining Blackstone, Galvin was executive director of health services and chief medical officer for General Electric for 15 years. There he was in charge of the design and financial and clinical performance of GE's health programmes. He was also responsible for health policy strategies affecting employees.

Galvin’s work has been widely published in the New England Journal of Medicine and Health Affairs and he was a co-founder of the Leapfrog Group and founder of Bridges to Excellence, two non-profits that have helped drive the quality agenda.

Stephen A. Schwarzman, Blackstone's chairman and chief executive, says: "We are delighted that someone of Dr Galvin's outstanding expertise and stature has agreed to head Equity Healthcare. This is one of Blackstone's most important initiatives. Through it, we can show that the private sector is playing a major role in developing market-based solutions to both improving the quality of health care and containing its costs."

Galvin adds: "Equity Healthcare is one of the most innovative efforts within corporate America to deal with the rapidly increasing cost of healthcare, while at the same time improving the health and well being of the affected employees and their families. I am excited about leading this effort and making it a model for best-of-class health care delivery in the United States."