Deborah L. Wilkerson

In Memoriam
Deborah L. Wilkerson, MA, FACRM

Leader, researcher, colleague, friend, and advocate for the measurement of health care quality. Chief Research and Education Officer, CARF, Tucson, AZ. Past president of the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine. Died unexpectedly at age 57 while scuba diving off the coast of Mexico on November 26, 2005.

Deborah Wilkerson was a researcher, administrator, and leader on issues of outcome measurement, health care quality, postacute payment policy, and independent living. She sought to bring both rigor and relevance to the manner in which health care organizations evaluated their performance. She most wanted information that would be relevant to the end user, the health care consumer. Regardless of position, Wilkerson remained grounded in both academia and the real world of consumers and providers.

Wilkerson's first discipline was cultural anthropology, a discipline that gave her insight into many of the issues and challenges facing both health care providers and consumers. She acquired a BA in anthropology in 1971 and an MA in 1979, both in anthropology, from Wake Forest University. She resumed her graduate studies in medical anthropology at mid career in the mid 1990s. She was nearing the completion of her PhD from the University of Arizona at the time of her death.

From the mid 1970s to the early 1980s, from her days in North Carolina to the San Francisco Bay area, and then to Seattle, WA, Wilkerson was a student of the independent living movement-a social movement of, by, and for, people with disabilities. From her base at the University of Washington in Seattle, she worked with local consumer groups to advance options for people with disabilities by evaluating the services rendered to them. Wilkerson never lost her consumer perspective and brought a strong consumer commitment to issues of outcome measurement and quality improvement.

In 1983, Wilkerson became the administrator for the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the University of Washington under the devoted tutelage of Justus Lehman, MD, the department's legendary chairperson. There, Wilkerson demonstrated her enormous multitasking abilities that would serve her so well later in her career.

In 1987 Wilkerson joined the research staff of the National Rehabilitation Hospital (NRH) in Washington, DC, where she served both as a senior researcher and as the director of NRH's program evaluation and patient outcome system. There Wilkerson honed her analytic and writing skills that enabled her to advance nationally many of her key ideas in outcome measurement that later became her trademarks. She contributed extensively to studies on postacute payment and policy. Wilkerson always sought to bring conceptual clarity to her research and outcome studies, a clarity that enabled her to partition quickly any complex task into its component parts and provide a course of action.

Wilkerson's national reputation propelled her to Tucson in 1996, where she took on a series of research and education leadership positions at the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities (CARF). CARF's standard-setting role provided Wilkerson the platform with which to refine and enhance her ideas not only in postacute rehabilitation but also in other health and human service sectors, including behavioral health and other fields facing similar challenges in outcome and quality measurement. Wilkerson also pioneered a new patient/consumer satisfaction reporting system, uSPEQ, designed to give voice to patients and clients in evaluating the services rendered to them.

Wilkerson had served on a variety of national expert panels and advisory boards, and presented in many national and international forums. In 2002-03, Wilkerson became president of the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine and led the organization to its next stage of development.

Wilkerson's zest for life reached well beyond her professional activities. As a college student, she lived in Bogota, Columbia. As a young adult, she flew glider planes and, at midlife, she and her husband, David Larabee, lived aboard a 40-foot sailboat with their daughter, Meredith while living in the Seattle and Washington areas. She later abandoned the dream of sailing around the world and settled for the desert and mountains of Arizona that she loved so much. Wilkerson embraced it all and met her fate while scuba diving in the waters off the coast of Mexico.

Her embrace extended to family, friends, and colleagues everywhere. She affirmed people. She welcomed their eccentricities and differences, not as distractions, but as refreshing assets that added to life's rich mosaic.

Sadly, Wilkerson died leaving several of life's dreams unfulfilled, including her doctorate, a new patient satisfaction instrument, manuscripts in progress, and seeing Meredith thrive well into adulthood.
We salute Deborah and her family and pledge to live life more fully as we tarry in her shadow. We affirm her affection and loyalty, and her commitment to excellence, perseverance, and the well-being of people everywhere.

Gerben DeJong, PhD, FACRM
National Rehabilitation Hospital
President-elect
American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine

Click here for CARF's Memoriam to Deborah.

Click here to learn about the Deborah L. Wilkerson Early Career Award Fund.