He is the author of the New York Times bestselling books, The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care and How to Fix It, recipient of the 2020 Business Book of the Year Award by the Association of Business Journalists, and Unaccountable: What Hospitals Won't Tell You and How Transparency Can Revolutionize Health Care, that was turned into the Fox T.V. series The Resident.

Dr. Makary has served in leadership at the World Health Organization Patient Safety Program, and has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine. He is the recipient of the Nobility in Science Award from the National Pancreas Foundation, has been a visiting professor at over 25 medical schools, has published over 250 peer-reviewed scientific articles, has served as on several editorial boards, is the Chairman of the African Mission Healthcare medical advisory board, and leads several health care collaboratives. He is also Executive Director of "Improving Wisely," a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation project to lower health care costs, and he is Founder of the Johns Hopkins Center For Surgical Outcomes Research and Clinical Trials.

He is Editor-in-Chief of Medpage Today, his articles have appeared in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Time, and Newsweek, and his current research focuses on the underlying causes of disease, public policy, health care costs, and relationship-based medicine.