This is retirement?

Dr. Donald Berwick (left), head of the Cambridge-based Institute for Healthcare Improvement and a world leader of the patient safety movement, is profiled in a recent Wall Street Journal feature on the paths people take after retirement.

Berwick, 61, retired from practicing pediatrics eight years ago. In the 1980s he worked for Harvard Community Health Plan, an early health-maintenance organization that later became Harvard Pilgrim Health Care.

"As a doctor, I saw every day the deep problems in hospitals with the quality of care -- waiting times for operations, infection rates, and test results that were never pursued," Berwick tells the Journal. "People were dying because of these things, and they were so easy to fix."