Dr. Helen L. Smits served as the deputy administrator and chief medical officer of The Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA, now CMS) during President Bill Clinton’s first term. She is a former member of the Board of Regents of the American College of Physicians and the Board of Commissioners of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, serving as its first women chair from 1991 to 1993.

She has been a faculty member at the Yale School of Public Health and the School of Medicine at the University of Connecticut as well as a visiting professor at the Wagner School in New York. She was the director of the John Dempsey Hospital at the University of Connecticut for seven years and is the author of a number of publications with particular emphasis on the policy issues associated with the quality of health care.