Volcanoes were Peter Hill’s initial passion, but after meeting and marrying his wife, a hospital administrator, he decided to pursue work that was more connected to others’ lives and become a physician. Hill left his volcanology program with a master’s degree and attended the University of Maryland School of Medicine. After a residency at Johns Hopkins in emergency medicine, Hill joined the faculty as assistant chief of service.

Today his work considers burning issues of another sort. As senior vice president of medical affairs for the Johns Hopkins Health System and vice president of medical affairs for The Johns Hopkins Hospital, positions he was promoted to in March, Hill is helping the health system address the opioid crisis. To that end, he and colleagues at Johns Hopkins, the University of Maryland and MedStar Health collaborated to make changes to the Maryland Medicaid opioid prescribing initiatives, undertaken July 1. In addition, he has spent time establishing an opioid stewardship clinical community to shape the health system’s use of opioids for pain management.

Hill also coordinates weekly calls with other health system leaders to cover system-level issues such as multihospital credentialing for clinicians who work in more than one Johns Hopkins setting, and he works with pharmacy services to identify opportunities to reduce medication costs. He’s also part of the Joy of Medicine task force, which is looking for ways to help everyone ease a challenging job.

“What gets me excited is the opportunity to bring people together from diverse backgrounds and disciplines to solve problems,” Hill says.

Before taking on his current role, Hill served as vice chair of clinical affairs for the Department of Emergency Medicine. In that position, which he started in 2012, Hill took particular interest in operations, service delivery, risk management and quality improvement. Under his leadership, the department saw increased diagnostic accuracy for patients and reductions in unnecessary hospital admissions.