Ask David B. Hoyt, MD, FACS, what he thinks about his Lifetime Achievement Award from the ACS, and he will tell you the real joy is not in the recognition itself, but the service being recognized: “I’m very proud that we have an organization that has allowed me to contribute. In addition to taking care of patients, probably the most satisfying thing you can do is to give to your professional organization. So, to me, this is just a manifestation of what I’ve always enjoyed doing.”
However humble his reaction, the honor is outstanding. The Lifetime Achievement Award, awarded by the Board of Regents on the rare occasion of identifying a worthy candidate, recognizes an ACS Fellow’s exceptional contributions to the College over several decades. This prolonged, continuous service can take many forms, including volunteer, elected, and staff-level contributions providing guidance, expertise, leadership, and influence across all ACS programs and activities.
Dr. Hoyt, an emeritus professor of surgery at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), and a past ACS Executive Director, has contributed to the ACS in virtually all of these forms.
Contributions to the ACS
When Dr. Hoyt became the Executive Director of the ACS in 2010, he was by no means new to the College. An ACS Fellow since 1987, Dr. Hoyt had served as a Chair of the ACS Committee on Trauma and past-Medical Director of the ACS Trauma, Research, and Optimal Patient Care Division (now known as the Division of Research and Optimal Patient Care). He also was a past member of multiple Board of Governors committees. Using his own specialty in trauma surgery, he had served as a national faculty member and Director of Training for the College’s Advanced Trauma Life Support® course. As a result of this work, he was a recipient of the ACS Distinguished Service Award in 2007 and was selected to deliver the Scudder Oration on Trauma at Clinical Congress in 2008.
During his time as the Executive Director of the ACS (2010–2022), he advanced his earlier work in trauma surgery on measuring system performance via quality indicators and databases, using this approach as a foundation for enhancing ACS Quality Programs. He oversaw development of Optimal Resources for Surgical Quality and Safety (known as the Red Book) and Optimal Resources for Surgical Education and Training (the Gold Book), which led to an array of new programs in quality verification and surgical education.
Dr. Hoyt also oversaw the following: initiation of the ACS Stop the Bleed program, development of the Military Health System Strategic Partnership-ACS, expansion of membership advocacy and leadership training, and reorganization and expansion of the ACS Division of Advocacy and Health Policy efforts in monitoring and developing legislation, regulation, and health policy formation. Following the end of his ACS tenure, Dr. Hoyt delivered the Martin Memorial Lecture at Clinical Congress in 2022.
“Forty years ago, I experienced the impact of verification programs in trauma in organizing the quality of care. So, when I had the opportunity to join as Executive Director, my hope was that we would be able to bring those same principles to other parts of surgery,” said Dr. Hoyt. “I think we’ve been able to do that with vascular surgery, gastrointestinal surgery, acute care surgery, and many, many other programs that have really followed the principle of setting standards, creating the infrastructure to support those standards, then verifying with an external peer review team that those standards are being met.”
The ACS model and its positive impact, he said, “have been very, very inspiring to me, but also have been very significant in trying to spread what I enjoyed decades ago, in trauma.”
Education and Career
Dr. Hoyt received his medical degree from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and completed his internship, surgical residency, and a research fellowship at the UC San Diego and The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California.
Following his surgical training, Dr. Hoyt joined the faculty at UC San Diego, where he eventually became Monroe E. Trout Professor of Surgery and vice-chair of the Department of Surgery. During this period, he maintained National Institutes of Health funding for more than a decade and served as Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium co-chair for 11 years. He simultaneously served as director of the Division of Trauma, Burns, and Critical Care at the UC San Diego Medical Center for 17 years. While in this role, he participated in the San Diego Country Trauma System’s groundbreaking Medical Audit Committee, which reviewed all trauma deaths for preventable causes and potential improvements applicable to future cases.
Following his time in San Diego, Dr. Hoyt was appointed chair of the Department of Surgery and John E. Connolly Professor of Surgery at UCI, where he quickly received a promotion to Executive Vice-Dean for the UCI School of Medicine. Dr. Hoyt also is a past-president of the Council of Medical Specialty Societies, American Association for the Surgery of Trauma, Society of General Surgeons of San Diego, Trauma Research and Education Foundation, and Shock Society.
A Lasting Impression
Although Dr. Hoyt prefers to highlight the ACS and surgical field rather than his own significance, his input indubitably informed the College’s successes during the last 2 decades. In a letter of recommendation, L. D. Britt, MD, MPH, FACS, the Henry Ford Professor and Edward J. Brickhouse Chairman of Eastern Virginia Medical School Department of Surgery in Norfolk, Virginia, and a Past-President of the ACS (2010–2011), summarized Dr. Hoyt’s legacy: “Dr. David Hoyt’s leadership and mastery has allowed the American College of Surgeons to become the best version of itself. Dr. Hoyt is the definition and embodiment of the ACS Lifetime Achievement Award.”
