PARTNERS CENTER OF EXPERTISE IN QUALITY & SAFETY
FOR PARTNERS RESIDENTS & FELLOWS
FACULTY CO-CHAIRS:
Allen Kachalia, MD, JD, is an academic hospitalist at Brigham &
Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. He is an Associate
Professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public
Health.
ALLEN KACHALIA, MD, JD
Associate Chief Quality
Officer, BWH
akachalia@partners.org
As a clinician, Allen regularly attends and teaches on the hospital wards
with medical students and residents. Administratively, as a member of
the hospital’s leadership team, Allen serves as the Associate Chief
Quality Officer for BWH and also co-directs the Center for Clinical
Excellence. In this role, Allen provides oversight for the hospital’s
inpatient and ambulatory quality, safety, and performance
improvement activities. Allen also has a law degree, and maintains
research pursuits in legal issues in medicine, including malpractice
system reform and disclosure, and how they relate to the quality and
safety of medical care.
Elizabeth Mort, MD, MPH is a practicing general internist with more
than fifteen years of experience in clinical performance management
and operational improvement activities in an Academic Medical Center
and Integrated Delivery System setting. Dr. Mort currently holds the
titles of Senior Vice President of Quality and Patient Safety and Chief
Quality Officer for MGH and MGPO. She also serves as Senior Medical
Director at Partners HealthCare, Inc (PHS).
ELIZABETH MORT, MD, MPH
Sr. Vice President for Quality
and Patient Safety and Chief
Quality Officer for MGH &
MGPO
emort@partners.org
Dr. Mort has extensive experience in health care quality measurement,
quality and safety improvement, managed care medical management
strategies, pay for performance contracting and hospital operations. At
MGH she oversees the Center for Quality & Safety and is responsible for
high stakes quality and safety measurement and improvement work
across a broad range of initiatives. In her current roles at PHS, she
leads the care redesign efforts aimed at common episodic procedures
and conditions. Dr. Mort also plays a lead role in contracting quality
incentives, and is leading the quality measurement reporting for the
public website at Partners.
Dr. Mort was on the AHA panel on Healthcare Acquired Conditions in
2011. She co-chairs the Mass Medical Society’s committee on the
quality of medical practice. Dr. Mort has been a member of the NCQA’s
Women’s Health Measurement Advisory Panel. She was a member of
the National Quality Forums Technical Advisory Panel for the
development of hypertension measures. She has served as a member of
the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Composite Measures
Workgroup inpatient quality indicator sub-workgroup. She has served
on the NQF Steering Committee for Additional Priorities for Acute
Hospital Quality Measures. Dr. Mort currently serves on the NQF Expert
Panel for Patient Reported Outcome measures.
Dr. Mort completed her residency in primary care internal medicine at
MGH in 1986 followed by two fellowship years at the Department of
Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School. She also completed a
Masters in Public Health at the University of Michigan in 1982, which
focused on Health Planning and Administration and Population Planning.
PARTNERS CENTER OF EXPERTISE IN QUALITY & SAFETY
FOR PARTNERS RESIDENTS & FELLOWS
FACULTY PARTICIPANTS:
David Westfall Bates, MD, MSc is an internationally renowned expert in
patient safety, using information technology to improve care, quality of
care, cost-effectiveness, and outcomes assessment in medical practice.
He assumed his current position at BWH in 2011.
DAVID W. BATES, MD, MSc
Senior Vice President for
Quality and Safety and Chief
Quality Officer, Brigham and
Women’s Hospital and
Brigham and Women’s
Physician Organization
dbates@partners.org
At a time when patient safety has become a key driver for focusing
national attention on healthcare quality, Dr. Bates' work has not only
shown the magnitude of the problem but also provided a blueprint for
helping solve it. He led a seminal study on the epidemiology of drugrelated injuries, demonstrating that the most effective way to prevent
serious medication errors is to focus on improving the systems. He has
also performed many studies on how computerized, evidence based
guidelines can improve quality and efficiency. Dr. Bates has been
recognized for several years by Modern Healthcare magazine as one of
the “100 most powerful” individuals in US health care.
In addition to serving as a practicing general internist and chief of
General Internal Medicine, Bates also is a professor of medicine at
Harvard Medical School and a professor of Health Policy and
Management at the Harvard School of Public Health, where he codirects the Program in Clinical Effectiveness. He also serves as medical
director of Clinical and Quality Analysis for Partners HealthCare. He
directs the Center for Patient Safety Research and Practice at BWH,
and serves as external program lead for research in the World Health
Organization’s Global Alliance for Patient Safety. He is the associate
editor of the Journal of Patient Safety.
Bates is a graduate of Stanford University and the Johns Hopkins School
of Medicine. He began his fellowship in general internal medicine at
BWH in 1988, and he received an MSc in Health Policy and Management
from the Harvard School of Public Health in 1990.
JEFFREY B. COOPER, PhD
Director, Center for Medical
Simulation
jcooper@partners.org
Dr. Cooper serves as Director of the Center for Medical Simulation. He
is internationally renowned in the anesthesia community for his seminal
contributions to the prevention of adverse events and patient injury
and is considered a pioneer in the development of medical simulation.
His studies of human error in medicine in the 1970s were among the
first ever conducted. Cooper retired last April as the director of
Biomedical Engineering of Partners HealthCare, having served in this
role for 14 years. Dr. Cooper created the Anesthesia Patient Safety
Foundation (APSF) in 1985. This was the first organization in the world
that focused solely on patient safety. Some years later, research that
APSF supported led Dr. Cooper to see the benefit of simulation training
for patient safety. At the Center for Medical Simulation, his goal is to
get people to be more self-reflective, to think more deeply about how
they make mistakes, how accidents happen and how they can prevent
them. By using simulated clinical situations for training on teamwork
and managing emergencies, caregivers learn how to avoid crises and
develop better teamwork skills. In addition to a broad focus in patient
safety, simulation for teamwork and learning without putting patients
at risk is his primary interest.
PARTNERS CENTER OF EXPERTISE IN QUALITY & SAFETY
FOR PARTNERS RESIDENTS & FELLOWS
SONALI DESAI, MD, MPH
Associate Physician, Brigham
and Women's Hospital;
Instructor in Medicine,
Harvard Medical School
sdesai5@partners.org
Dr. Desai’s contributions at Brigham & Women’s hospital cover clinical
care, research, administrative, and teaching roles. Her clinical care
responsibilities include attending on the inpatient Rheumatology
consult service and the outpatient Rheumatology clinic. Dr. Desai
conducts research on quality of care in the rheumatic diseases,
particularly rheumatoid arthritis, with support from the American
College of Rheumatology's Physician Scientist Development Award. She
focuses on utilizing health information technology to measure and
improve upon quality of care. Dr. Desai has reported on using
administrative and clinical data to develop a quality metric on
pneumococcal vaccination for immunosuppressed rheumatology
patients. A quality improvement project to increase vaccination among
at-risk patients is underway at the BWH rheumatology practice and
affiliated sites. Dr. Desai is leading a pilot project to use computer
tablets in the outpatient rheumatology practice to collect data from
rheumatoid arthritis patients on functional status, present this patientdata electronically to rheumatologists during the office visit, and
integrate this data with the electronic medical record. Additionally, Dr.
Desai was awarded a pilot grant to measure and improve the care for
patients at-risk for and with osteoporosis at BWH using a
multidisciplinary team involving rheumatology, endocrinology,
radiology, orthopedic surgery and emergency medicine.
Dr. Desai is also the Director of Quality for the Department of Medicine,
overseeing the development, measurement and improvement upon
clinical quality metrics, and the Ambulatory Director for Patient Safety
at the Center for Clinical Excellence, serving as the physician leader for
development and implementation of patient safety initiatives at BWH.
The short-term goals of the Ambulatory Safety Team are to enhance
the patient safety culture and to create a robust process of closing the
loop on safety reports.
Dr. Desai received her MD from Brown University, and an MPH focused
on quality improvement, medical informatics and health information
technology from the Harvard School of Public Health.
PARTNERS CENTER OF EXPERTISE IN QUALITY & SAFETY
FOR PARTNERS RESIDENTS & FELLOWS
JESSICA C. DUDLEY, MD
Chief Medical Officer,
Brigham and Women’s
Physician’s Organization
jdudley@partners.org
As Chief Medical Officer for the Brigham and Women’s Physician’s
Organization, Dr. Dudley is responsible for overseeing the contracting
efforts on behalf of the BWPO and leading the medical management
team in developing and implementing programs designed to meet pay
for performance targets related to efficiency and quality. Additional
responsibilities include addressing physician work-life issues and
collaboration and development of physician leadership and
volunteerism programs. Previously, as Associate Medical Director for
Partners Community HealthCare, Inc. (PCHI), and Team Leader for the
High Performance Medicine Trend Management Team, Dr. Dudley was
responsible for developing and coordinating system wide approaches to
address areas of increasing resource utilization. The targets included
physician utilization of pharmaceuticals and high cost imaging tests.
These efforts included collaboration from multiple institutions to
develop and implement strategies to optimize appropriate utilization of
these resources. For both pharmacy and radiology, this included use of
electronic ordering platforms by physicians at the time of ordering,
development and deployment of guidelines to support physician
decision making, and feedback of practice patterns to physicians.
Previously, Dr. Dudley was Medical Director for Partners Human
Resources. Dr. Dudley supported the Human Resources team in the
development and management of the pharmacy benefit for Partners
employees and their dependents including contracting and on-going
formulary management. Dr. Dudley was also responsible for working
with insurers and other vendors to develop and deploy disease
management programs for employees. Prior to this position, Dr. Dudley
had worked as Associate Medical Director and prior to that, Assistant
Medical Director, for PCHI. In these roles, Dr. Dudley was responsible
for providing clinical support for negotiating risk and pay for
performance arrangements with local insurers on behalf of the PCHI
Network. Dr. Dudley was also responsible for the development and ongoing management of PCHI’s Pharmacy Management Program.
Dr. Dudley received her medical degree from Harvard Medical School.
She completed her internship and residency in Primary Care Internal
Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA and is Board
Certified in Internal Medicine.
PARTNERS CENTER OF EXPERTISE IN QUALITY & SAFETY
FOR PARTNERS RESIDENTS & FELLOWS
TIMOTHY FERRIS, MD, MPH
Vice President, Population
Health Management
tferris@partners.org
Dr. Ferris is a practicing general internist and pediatrician and the
medical director of the Mass General Physicians Organization. He also
serves as vice president for Population Health Management at Partners,
and is formally the Vice Chair for Quality for Partners Pediatrics and
Mass General Hospital for Children. He is a Senior Scientist in the
Partners/MGH Institute for Health Policy and an Associate Professor of
Medicine at Harvard Medical School. His research has focused on the
measurement and improvement of health care quality for adults and
children, particularly focused on the roles of financing and health
information technology.
In addition to quality improvement interventions, he has published
studies on the effects of the organization and financing of care on the
costs and quality of care, risk adjustment of quality measures, and
disparities in health care. He has over 50 publications including those
in journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA,
Pediatrics, and Health Affairs. Dr. Ferris has been leading efforts at
Partners Healthcare to improve the care of patients with multiple
chronic conditions with specific responsibility for design, oversight and
evaluation of programs to improve quality and efficiency of care for
high-risk patients such as those with heart failure.
Dr. Ferris has been a member of the Agency for Healthcare Research
and Quality’s Health Care Quality and Effectiveness Research study
section, has chaired two Technical Advisory Panels for the National
Quality Forum, sits on the Quality and Safety subcommittee to the
Board of the National Association of Children’s Hospitals and Related
Institutions (NACHRI), and consulted to the World Health Organization.
Dr. Gandhi is a board certified internist and Associate Professor of
Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She received her MD and MPH from
Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health, and
trained at Duke University Medical Center. Her undergraduate training
at Cornell University was in biochemistry.
TEJAL K. GANDHI, MD, MPH
Chief Quality and Safety
Officer, Partners HealthCare
tkgandhi@partners.org
Dr. Gandhi’s research interests focus on patient safety and reducing
error using information systems. She won the 2009 John Eisenberg
award for her contributions to understanding the epidemiology and
possible prevention strategies for medical errors in the outpatient
setting. Dr. Gandhi was the Executive Director of Quality and Safety at
Brigham and Women’s Hospital for 10 years, and in that role, she
worked to redesign systems to reduce medical errors and improve
quality. Currently, Dr. Gandhi is Chief Quality and Safety Officer at
Partners Healthcare. In this role, she is helping to lead the efforts to
standardize and implement patient safety best practices across the
system.
PARTNERS CENTER OF EXPERTISE IN QUALITY & SAFETY
FOR PARTNERS RESIDENTS & FELLOWS
ATUL GAWANDE, MD, MPH
Department of Surgery,
Brigham and Women's
Hospital and Dana Farber
Cancer Institute
agawande@partners.org
A surgeon and a writer, Atul Gawande is a staff member of Brigham and
Women's Hospital, the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, and the New
Yorker magazine. He received his BAS from Stanford University, MA (in
politics, philosophy, and economics) from Oxford University, MD from
Harvard Medical School, and MPH from the Harvard School of Public
Health. He served as a senior health policy advisor in the Clinton
presidential campaign and White House from 1992 to 1993. Since 1998,
he has been a staff writer for the New Yorker magazine. In 2003, he
completed his surgical residency at Brigham and Women's Hospital,
Boston, and joined the faculty as a general and endocrine surgeon. He
is also Associate Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School,
Associate Professor in the Department of Health Policy and
Management at the Harvard School of Public Health, and Associate
Director for the BWH Center for Surgery and Public Health. He has
published research studies in areas ranging from surgical technique, to
US military care for the wounded, to error and performance in
medicine. He is the director of the World Health Organization's Global
Challenge for Safer Surgical Care.
In 2006, he received the MacArthur Award for his research and writing.
His nonfiction writing has been selected to appear in the annual Best
American Essays collection twice and in Best American Science Writing
five of the last six years. His book COMPLICATIONS: A SURGEON'S NOTES
ON AN IMPERFECT SCIENCE was a finalist for the National Book Award in
2002 and is published in more than a hundred countries. He is editor of
THE BEST AMERICAN SCIENCE WRITING 2006. His most recent book,
BETTER: A SURGEON'S NOTES ON PERFORMANCE was selected as one of
Amazon.com's ten best books of 2007.
PARTNERS CENTER OF EXPERTISE IN QUALITY & SAFETY
FOR PARTNERS RESIDENTS & FELLOWS
MICHAEL GUSTAFSON, MD,
MBA
Chief Operating Officer,
Brigham & Women’s
Faulkner Hospital
mgustafson@partners.org
Dr. Michael Gustafson is Chief Operating Officer of Brigham & Women’s
Faulkner Hospital, Boston, MA. In his previous role as Senior Vice
President, Clinical Excellence, BWH/Faulkner Hospitals, Dr. Gustafson
directed the Center for Clinical Excellence, which was created in 2001
to guide the institution's strategies for clinical performance
measurement, analysis, improvement, and planning across such
dimensions of care as service excellence, operational efficiency,
quality, and patient safety. He also served as a principal quality liaison
and representative for the institution within Partners HealthCare
System and with the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. He was the
Executive Sponsor for a hospital-wide Balanced Scorecard reporting and
management system at BWH, one of the first of its kind to be
implemented in a U.S. academic medical center. In 2005, he also
assumed direct operational responsibility for the institution’s Pharmacy
and Pathology Services, with oversight for approximately 800 FTE's and
annual operating expenses exceeding $140 million.
Dr. Gustafson serves as an Assistant Professor in the Department of
Surgery at Harvard Medical School, with research interests including
risk-adjusted surgical outcomes, the application of human factors and
systems thinking to patient safety, and effective structures and
methods to drive change within complex healthcare settings. He
completed his MD degree at West Virginia University, his General
Surgery residency at Brigham & Women's Hospital, and a 3-year NIH
funded surgical research fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital.
He later went on to become one of the first surgeons to ever receive an
MBA degree from Harvard Business School, where he graduated in 1999
with honors.
LELA M. HOLDEN, PhD, RN
Patient Safety Officer for
Massachusetts General
Hospital
lmholden@partners.org
Lela Holden was named the first Patient Safety Officer for
Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts in July 2008. In
that position she oversees the staff and processes for safety event
reporting, which numbered more than 15,000 in 2011. She also oversees
the root causes analyses for major investigations and the reporting of
events to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and the Board
of Registration in Medicine. Dr. Holden has developed and executed a
model for team restoration following disruptive interactions among
staff members. She has lectured both nationally and internationally on
patient safety.
Dr. Holden holds a Master’s degree in psychology from the University of
Santo Tomas in the Philippines, a Master’s degree in nursing from the
University of California at San Francisco, and a PhD in nursing
administration with a focus in patient safety from the Uniformed
Services University of the Health Sciences. Her additional credentials
include certification in legislative affairs, advanced nurse executive
certification, Certified Professional in Healthcare Quality (CPHQ), and
Certified Professional in Patient Safety (CPPS). Her areas of research
and peer-reviewed publications include the dimensions of patient
safety in ambulatory care facilities and the topic of complex adaptive
systems. Dr. Holden was on the board as part of the National Patient
Safety Foundation to develop the first national certification in patient
safety and continues as part of the expert panel for its ongoing
oversight.
PARTNERS CENTER OF EXPERTISE IN QUALITY & SAFETY
FOR PARTNERS RESIDENTS & FELLOWS
Lucian Leape is an Adjunct Professor of Health Policy in the Department
of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public
Health. Prior to joining the faculty at Harvard in 1988, he was Professor
of Surgery and Chief of Pediatric Surgery at Tufts University School of
Medicine. Dr. Leape is internationally recognized as a leader of the
patient safety movement, starting with the publication in JAMA of his
seminal article, Error in Medicine, in 1994. His subsequent research
demonstrated the success of the application of systems theory to the
prevention of adverse drug events.
LUCIAN L. LEAPE, MD
Adjunct Professor of Health
Policy, Harvard School of
Public Health
leape@hsph.harvard.edu
THOMAS H. LEE, MD, MSc
Network President, Partners
HealthCare System
thlee@partners.org
Dr. Leape was a member of the Institute of Medicine committee that
published “To Err is Human” in 1999 and “Crossing the Quality Chasm”
in 2001. He has published over 125 papers on patient safety and quality
of care. In 2004, he received the John Eisenberg Patient Safety Award
from the JCAHO and National Quality Forum. In 2006, Modern
Healthcare named him as one of the 30 people who have had the most
impact on healthcare in the past 30 years. In 2007, the National
Patient Safety Foundation established the Leape Institute to further
strategic thinking in patient safety. Dr. Leape is a graduate of Cornell
University and Harvard Medical School.
Thomas H. Lee, MD, is an internist and cardiologist, and is Network
President for Partners HealthCare System, the integrated delivery
system founded by Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts
General Hospital, and Chief Executive Officer for Partners Community
HealthCare. He is a graduate of Harvard College, Cornell University
Medical College, and Harvard School of Public Health. He is a Professor
of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Health Policy
and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health. His research
interests include risk stratification and optimal management strategies
for common cardiovascular problems, and improvement of quality of
care, with a particular focus on critical pathways, guideline
development and implementation, and managed care.
Dr. Lee is a member of the Massachusetts Health Care Quality and Cost
Council, the Board of Directors of Geisinger Health System, and the
Panel of Health Advisors of the Congressional Budget Office. With
James J. Mongan, MD, he is the author of Chaos and Organization in
Health Care (MIT Press, 2009). He is an Associate Editor of The New
England Journal of Medicine.
PARTNERS CENTER OF EXPERTISE IN QUALITY & SAFETY
FOR PARTNERS RESIDENTS & FELLOWS
AMY LEIGH MILLER, MD,
PhD
Medical Director, Clinical
Systems Improvement and
Interim Medical Director,
Clinical Information Systems
almiller@partners.org
Dr. Miller is a practicing cardiologist with a primary interest in the
interface of clinical information systems with clinical care, and the
effects of that interface on clinician training and workflow, patient
safety, and quality improvement. She received her BS in Biomedical
Engineering from University of Iowa, and an MS and PhD in
Neuroscience and MD from the University of Michigan. Dr. Miller
currently divides her time among clinical practice, serving as medical
advisor to the BWH Biomedical Engineering team, and administrative
activities at the division, department, hospital, and enterprise level
with emphasis on IS/clinical informatics and patient safety. Her
administrative responsibilities include inpatient Meaningful Use
adoption, enhancing our clinical IS training for new clinicians and new
applications, co-development and implementation of hardware and
hardware support strategy for the Brigham, and working to ensure
compliance with mandatory clinical information system applications. In
Sept. 2012, Dr. Miller became interim Medical Director of Clinical
Information Systems at Brigham and Women’s and Faulkner Hospitals.
In this role, she is working to maintain, and as needed, enhance current
“home-grown” systems while building content and redesigning
workflows in anticipation of an enterprise-wide installation of Epic,
with the first scheduled deployment occurring at Brigham and Women’s
and Faulkner in 2015.
Dr. Miller is an Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School and
Associate Editor for the BWH Interactive Clinical Problem Solving Series
of The New England Journal of Medicine.
Dr. Schnipper is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical
School, Associate Physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and
Director of Clinical Research for the Brigham and Women’s Academic
Hospitalist Service. He is also the co-chair of Partners High Performance
Medicine team 2.4: transitions in care.
JEFFREY SCHNIPPER, MD,
MPH, FHM
Director of Clinical Research,
BWH Academic Hospitalist
Service
jschnipper@partners.org
His research interests focus on improving the quality of health care
delivery for general medical patients. Subject areas include preventive
cardiology, inpatient diabetes care, safe and effective medication use,
transitions in care, and communication among health care providers.
The quality improvement interventions that he studies include the
greater use of information systems, hospital-based pharmacists, case
managers for patients with chronic diseases, and process redesign using
continuous quality improvement methods.
Dr. Schnipper is a graduate of Harvard College. He received his MD
from Harvard Medical School in 1996. He completed a residency in
internal medicine and primary care at Massachusetts General Hospital.
In 2001, he completed a fellowship in general internal medicine at
Massachusetts General Hospital and earned an MPH from the Harvard
School of Public Health in Clinical Effectiveness.
PARTNERS CENTER OF EXPERTISE IN QUALITY & SAFETY
FOR PARTNERS RESIDENTS & FELLOWS
JEREMIAH (JAY) SCHUUR
MD, MHS
Director of Quality and
Patient Safety, BWH
Department of Emergency
Medicine
jschuur@partners.org
Dr. Schuur is a practicing emergency physician with a research focus on
health care quality. He completed an emergency medicine residency at
Brown University and then spent 2 years as a Robert Wood Johnson
Clinical Scholar at Yale University. Subject areas include development
and evaluation of performance measures, quality improvement
strategies, preventing healthcare associated infections (HAIs) and
documentation of variation in emergency care. Dr. Schuur has
experience creating and evaluating performance measures. He is
familiar with a number of publicly available data sets, especially
NHAMCS, which are a good source of data for resident and student
projects. Dr. Schuur is enthusiastic about collaborating with interested
residents or students. Recent funded studies include: 1) a project to
identify and disseminate best practices to prevent HAIs in EDs; 2) a
project to develop measures of quality emergency care for elders (age
65+) and to subsequently test these measures in Partners EDs; 3) a
project to develop and implement antibiograms in nursing homes and
evaluate their effect on prescribing behaviors in NHs and EDs; 4) a
project to evaluate the use of observation care in hospitals across
Massachusetts, with the aim of creating efficiency performance
measures; 5) a project to evaluate several recent NQF measures of
imaging appropriateness in Partners EDs.
Dr. Schuur chairs the Quality and Performance Committee of the
American College of Emergency Physicians. He is an appointed member
of the Medicare Evidence Development & Coverage Advisory Committee
(MEDCAC). Dr. Schuur represents Emergency Medicine on the American
Medical Association's Physician Council for Performance Improvement
(PCPI).