Former Gottlieb Colleagues Offer Clues to His Management Style, Goals

FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb held his first all-hands meeting with agency staff last week — and former Gottlieb colleagues offered their own insights into his management style and goals two days later.

Gottlieb, who promised lawmakers he would increase the agency’s focus on postmarket safety for medical devices, told agency staff now is an historic opportunity to advance the agency’s mission, including implementing the 21st Century Cures Act.

As a protégé of Mark McClellan, FDA commissioner from 2002 to 2004, Gottlieb is likely to approach change at the agency with an a economist’s eye — “as interested in the economic ramifications of a policy as in the policy itself,” said Marc Scheineson, now a partner at Alston and Bird, who formerly worked in legislative affairs at FDA and alongside Gottlieb as an advisor.

Gottlieb will focus on the core agency missions, said Scheineson, who spoke in an FDAnews webinar, along with Wayne Pines, president of health care for APCO Worldwide consultancy and a former FDA spokesman, and Peter Pitts, co-founder and president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, who also worked with Gottlieb at the FDA.