Dr. John Hammer is a leader, advisor and educator in the field of infectious diseases. He obtained his medical degree from the University of Texas and earned membership into the Alpha Omega Alpha medical honor society. John completed his residency in internal medicine and fellowship in infectious diseases at the University of Colorado. Drawn by the diverse and ever changing world of infectious diseases he went on to complete a certification in Tropical Medicine through the Gorgas Institute in Lima, Peru.

Keen on putting his expertise to use and to fulfill a core tenet of giving back to the community John spent several years volunteering with a non-governmental organization that provided training and mentoring programs to increase knowledge and improve infrastructure around the treatment of HIV in developing nations. He credits his experience in Vietnam and South Africa as life changing in that it allowed him to both lead and follow, and to problem solve in real time to affect the model of care.

John’s ability to lead and mobilize teams is evident in his work on quality and systems improvement. He has led numerous multidisciplinary initiatives, such as an Antimicrobial Stewardship Program, that earned Rose Medical Center a designation of one of 25 Antimicrobial Centers of Excellence in the US. He continued this work, taking it to the state level and assisted 30 hospitals improve appropriate utilization of antibiotics. He led the hospital preparedness response to Ebola for a six-hospital division and helped create a Microbiology Center of Excellence by sharing resources and expertise between hospitals. Currently, he is the principal investigator for a pharmaceutical trial to improve the survival rates of patients with moderate and severe COVID-19 infection.

John is known for bringing his humor and practical compassion to the bedside, to his colleagues and to the teams on which he serves. His ability to form strong relationships has resulted in numerous successful team outcomes such as decreased sepsis related mortality and treatment pathways for cost effective delivery of care. He has a passion for deploying new and emerging technologies to streamline healthcare delivery and is a champion for telehealth in the area of infectious disease on a global scale.

Currently, he serves as the Chairperson for the department of Medicine at Rose Medical Center in Denver, Colorado and Medical Director for the division of Infectious Diseases for CarePoint PC. He also provides travel health care services assisting people who travel abroad with consultations on different infectious diseases prevalent around the world. He is the current president of the Colorado Chapter of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.