The following is a list of 50 experts leading the field of patient safety. The list includes individuals at healthcare organizations, national organizations, universities and other institutions who are devoted to improving patient safety and quality of care. The leaders listed here include healthcare providers, advocates, administrators, researchers and professors who have demonstrated a commitment to patient safety through their body of work, personal accomplishments and organizational leadership.
Note: Leaders are presented in alphabetical order and could not pay for inclusion.
James P. Bagian, MD, PE. Director for the Center for Health Engineering and Patient Safety, University of Michigan (Ann Arbor). In his position with the University of Michigan, Dr. Bagian is focused on creating solutions for safety and efficiency in healthcare. He has previously served as chief patient safety officer and director for Veterans Health's National Center for Patient Safety, a position he assumed in 1998. Dr. Baigan is also a former space shuttle astronaut, flying on two shuttle missions and leading the development of high-altitude pressure suits and space motion sickness treatment in his 15-year tenure with the National Air and Space Administration. He is a member of both the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine and is a board member of the National Patient Safety Foundation.
David W. Bates, MD, MSc. Senior Vice President for Quality and Safety and Chief Quality Officer at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Brigham and Women's Physicians Organization (Boston). Dr. Bates has served in his current positions at BWH since 2011. He has performed important research on the epidemiology of drug-related injuries and has explored the contributions of evidence-based guidelines to healthcare quality, efficiency and safety. He is associate editor of the Journal for Patient Safety. Dr. Bates is also a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston and co-directs the Program for Clinical Effectiveness at the Harvard School of Public Health. He is director of the BWH Center for Patient Safety Research and Practice and is external program lead for research for the World Health Organization's Global Alliance for Patient Safety.
Donald M. Berwick, MD, MPP. Former CMS Administrator (Baltimore). Dr. Berwick was CMS administrator from July 2010 to December 2011, during which time he spearheaded the launch of the patient safety initiative, Partnership for Patients. He is a co-founder and past president of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, an organization devoted to reducing patient harm and improving quality of care. Dr. Berwick announced his candidacy for Governor of Massachusetts in 2013, with elections for the office held November 2014.
Karl Bilimoria, MD, MS. Director of Surgical Outcomes and Quality Improvement Center at Northwestern Memorial Hospital (Chicago). Dr. Bilimoria is an assistant professor with joint appointments in the department of surgery, Institute for Healthcare Studies and Department of Medicine and the Social Sciences at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. He researches how to improve oncological and surgical care for patients. He collaborates extensively with the American College of Surgeons, for which he is a faculty scholar, on the ACS National Surgical Quality Improvement Program. Dr. Bilimoria is the program's champion at Northwestern and is heavily involved in process and quality improvement at the hospital. He is a surgical oncologist.
Leah F. Binder, MA, MGA. CEO of The Leapfrog Group (Washington, D.C.). Ms. Binder has been president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group, a national organization focused on helping healthcare achieve the triple aim, since 2008. Leapfrog awards patient safety scores to individual hospitals based on the survey data it collects. Before joining Leapfrog, Ms. Binder was vice president of Farmington, Maine-based Franklin Community Health Network. She authors columns on patient safety and healthcare improvement that have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post and Forbes, among other publications.
Maureen Bisognano, RN. President and CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (Cambridge, Mass.). Before taking her current role at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Ms. Bisognano served as the organization's president and COO for 15 years. Ms. Bisognano is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine and was appointed to The Commonwealth Fund's Commission on a High Performance Health System. She serves on the boards of the Commonwealth Fund, ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value and Mayo Clinic Health System — Eau Claire.
Doug Bonacum. Vice President of Quality, Safety and Resource Management at Kaiser Permanente (Oakland, Calif.). Mr. Bonacum has been vice president of quality, safety and resource management at Kaiser Permanente since 1994. He is a board member of the National Patient Safety Foundation and faculty for the Institute for Healthcare Improvement Patient Safety Executive Program. He is also an advisor to ECRI's Patient Safety Office Program. He was the first recipient of the NPSF's Chairman's Medal in 2006, an award recognizing new leadership in the field of patient safety. Before his career in patient safety, he spent eight years in the U.S. Submarine force, where he was responsible for weapons and ship safety as well as nuclear power plant operations.
Richard Boothman, JD. Chief Risk Officer of University of Michigan Health System (Ann Arbor). Mr. Boothman joined the University of Michigan in 2001 after spending 22 years in private practice as a trial lawyer for physicians, hospitals and health systems. He first joined as assistant general counsel before assuming his current position. He is a frequent contributor to national media outlets on the subject of patient safety and has testified before the federal government on patient safety topics. Mr. Boothman has participated in the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's National Advisory Committee Subcommittee for Patient Safety and Medical Liability Reform and is a member of the boards of governors for the National Patient Safety Foundation and the Michigan Hospital Association Patient Safety Organization.
Helga Brake, PharmD, CPHQ. Patient Safety Leader at Northwestern Memorial Hospital (Chicago). Ms. Brake serves as Northwestern Memorial Hospital's leader of patient safety. She is a member of the National Patient Safety Foundation's American Society of Professionals in Patient Safety and was an American Hospital Association National Patient Safety Foundation Patient Safety Leadership Fellow for 2011. Under Ms. Brake's leadership, Northwestern Memorial has maintained consistently excellent performance for patient safety.
Christine Cassel, MD. President and CEO of the National Quality Forum. Dr. Cassel has served in her current position since mid-2013, leading the NQF in establishing national priorities for performance improvement, endorsing standards for public reporting and promoting national goals through education and outreach. She came to the position from a 10-year stint as president and CEO of the American Board of Internal Medicine. She is board certified in internal medicine and geriatric medicine. Dr. Cassel has served as a member of the Measure Applications Partnership Coordinating Committee and of the National Priorities Partnership. She has co-authored 14 books and more than 200 journal articles on topics including geriatric medicine, aging, bioethics and health policy.
Mark R. Chassin, MD, FACP, MPP, MPH. President of The Joint Commission and President and CEO of the Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare (Oakbrook Terrace, Ill.). Dr. Chassin, in addition to leading The Joint Commission, was a member of the Institute of Medicine committee that published the seminal 1999 article To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System. Before his current position at The Joint Commission, Dr. Chassin was executive vice president for excellence in patient care, Edmond A. Guggenheim Professor of Health Policy and founding chairman of the department of health policy at New York City-based Mount Sinai Medical Center and Mount Sinai School of Medicine, respectively. He is a board-certified internist.
Michael R. Cohen, RPh, MS, ScD. President of the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (Horsham, Pa.). Dr. Cohen is president of the Institute for Safe Medication Practices and vice chair of The Joint Commission's patient safety advisory group, which is responsible for creating the National Patient Safety Goals. He is a 2005 MacArthur Fellow and serves as a consultant to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Drug Safety and Risk Management Committee. He also writes a weekly column on safety in healthcare for the Philadelphia Enquirer.
Molly Coye, MD, MPH. Chief Innovation Officer at UCLA Health (Los Angeles). Dr. Coye was appointed to her current position in 2010. She is responsible for developing programs to promote innovation to improve healthcare across the continuum of care. Dr. Coye is one of the authors of the To Err is Human and Crossing the Quality Chasm reports from the Institute of Medicine. At the IOM, she has also co-chaired the Committee on Patient Safety Data Standards. She is also a past commissioner of health for New Jersey, director of the California Department of Health Services and founder and CEO of the nonprofit Health Technology Center, an organization for technology in healthcare. She is chairman of the board for PAT, a nonprofit developing international health technologies.
Katrina Crist, MBA. CEO of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Prevention. Ms. Crist assumed her position at APIC in mid-2011. She was a contributor to the APIC Strategic Plan 2020, "toward healthcare without infection." Before her time at APIC, Ms. Crist was executive director for the American Society of Transplant Surgeons, helping develop regulatory standards for solid organ transplantation. She serves in an ex-officio capacity on APIC's board of directors.
James DeFontes, MD. Patient Safety Officer for Kaiser Permanente Southern California (Oakland). Dr. DeFontes became Kaiser's patient safety officer after serving as leader of the system's perioperative group, instituting systemwide observance of surgical checklists, timeouts and briefings. He is responsible for creating the first patient briefing process with outcomes, Highly Reliable Teams, patient safety huddles and just culture in the Kaiser system, all of which have coincided with a 40 percent decrease in reported safety events. He is a frequent speaker on patient safety and has spoken twice at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement national conference.
Sir Liam Donaldson, Patient Safety Envoy for the World Health Organization. Sir Donaldson is the founding chairman of the WHO's World Alliance for Patient Safety. In addition to his current position, he also serves as chairman of the Independent Monitoring for the Polio Eradication Programme. He is also a professor and chair of the Department of Health Policy at Imperial College in London and chancellor of Newcastle University. He has previously served as CMO for England and as the United Kingdom's chief medical advisor between 1998 and 2010.
Jane Englebright, PhD, RN, CENP, FAAN. CNO, Patient Safety Officer & Vice President of the Clinical Services Group for Hospital Corporation of America (Nashville, Tenn.). Dr. Englebright has led HCA's patient safety program since it began in 2000 and has helped define HCA's culture-technology-process model employed at the company's hundreds of hospitals ambulatory surgery centers. Dr. Englebright is also the at-large nursing representative to The Joint Commission's Board of Commissioners and is co-chair of the National Patient Safety Foundation's Board of Governors.
Ethan Freid, MD, FACP. Founder of the NYACP Near-Miss Registry. Along with the New York Chapter of the American College of Physicians, Dr. Freid developed the Near Miss Registry, a registry designed to document circumstances leading up to incidents that could have harmed patients, in order to better understand the circumstances leading up to near misses. The program is anonymous under the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act of 2005. Dr. Freid is also director of graduate medical education at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York City and chairman of the association of program directors in internal medicine.
Tom Frieden, MD, MPH. Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. President Barack Obama appointed Dr. Frieden to his current post in 2009. Dr. Frieden oversees the CDC, which is dedicated to reducing disease and dangers to public health by many means, including the National Healthcare Safety Network. The priorities he has set for the agency include improving health security, reducing leading causes of death and illness and strengthening public health and healthcare collaboration. He has been with CDC since 1990, when he started as an epidemic intelligence service officer in New York City, later becoming New York City Public Health Commissioner in 2002, the position in which he served until his appointment as director of the CDC.
Karen Frush, MD. Chief Patient Safety Officer at Duke University Health System (Durham, N.C.). Dr. Frush has held her position as chief patient safety officer at Duke University Health System since 2004, a role she has held since completing the National Patient Safety Leadership program. Dr. Frush has been a member of the advisory board for the North Carolina Hospital Association Center for Patient Safety and Hospital Quality since 2005. she also serves on the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Pediatric Emergency Medicine and the Safer Healthcare for Kids project advisory committee. She is a master trainer for TeamSTEPPS and is a pediatric patient safety expert for The Joint Commission Resources panel. Dr. Frush is also an associate professor of pediatrics and an assistant professor at the Duke University School of Nursing.
Chu Foxlin. Associate at Tsoi/Kobus & Associates (Cambridge, Mass.). Ms. Foxlin is a healthcare architect who focuses on incorporating safety, sustainability and customization into healthcare architectural design. She takes a particularly hands-on approach to understanding the precise needs of patients in a given healthcare facility. For example, before designing an outpatient facility for Massachusetts Eye & Ear Infirmary in Boston, she was fitted with a pair of vision-impairing glasses to get a first-hand sense of those patients' needs and to come up with targeted design solutions to meet those needs. In addition to MEEI, Ms. Foxlin designed the University of Minnesota's Amplatz Children's Hospital.
Tejal K. Gandhi, MD, MPH, CPPS. President of the National Patient Safety Foundation. Dr. Gandhi came to the NPSF from her position as CQO and chief safety officer Boston-based Partners Healthcare. Before that, she was executive director of quality and safety at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. She received the 2009 John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety and Quality award for her research in patient safety and reducing error through employing information systems. Dr. Gandhi is also president of the Lucian Leape Institute and president of the American Society of Professionals in Patient Safety.
Atul Gawande, MD, PhD. Professor of Public Health at Harvard School of Public Health (Boston). Dr. Gawande is a surgeon, journalist and public health researcher. For the past 12 years, he has been a staff writer for New Yorker magazine, where he began his career as a writer by publishing several pieces on the life of a medical resident. He is best known for his best-selling 2009 book "The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right," in which he illuminates the power of the checklist in preventing adverse events in high-risk situations. Dr. Gawande is co-founder and chairman of an international nonprofit for implementing systems to reduce surgical deaths, Lifebox. He currently practices general and endocrine surgery at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and is also a professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School in Boston.
Linda Groah, RN, MSN, CNOR, CNAA, FAAN. Executive Director and CEO of the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses. Ms. Groah has served as executive director and CEO of the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses since 2007. She has spent her entire career in perioperative nursing management and practice. Before her time at AORN, she was COO and nurse executive at Kaiser Foundation Hospital in San Francisco, where introduced leadership rounding and just culture as patient safety initiatives. Ms. Groah is chair of the Nursing Alliance for Quality Care.
Michael Henderson, MD. Chief Quality Officer of Cleveland Clinic. In addition to serving as chief quality officer, Dr. Henderson is also chairman of the Quality and Patient Safety Institute at the Cleveland Clinic. He is responsible for quality and safety improvement activities in the Cleveland Clinic system. Dr. Henderson is a surgeon specializing in hypertension and pancreatic surgery.
Gordon C. Hunt Jr., MD, MBA. Senior Vice President and CMO for Sutter Health (Sacramento, Calif.). Under Dr. Hunt's leadership, Sutter Health's Sutter Davis (Calif.) Hospital received the 2013 Baldrige Award, an honor bestowed upon organizations with exemplary leadership, strategic planning, customer focus, measurement, analysis and knowledge management, workforce focus, operations focus and results. Dr. Hunt is responsible for leading the system's quality and care integration initiatives. He has previously served as vice chairman of the board and a director of the Health Technology Center for the system. He is board certified in both internal and pulmonary medicine.
Christie Hutchinson, RN. Vice President of Care Coordination at First Choice Emergency Room (Lewisville, Texas). Ms. Hutchinson, who has a background in emergency nursing, is responsible for compliance and education as it relates to nursing, reception and imaging services at First Choice Emergency Room, overseeing safety for the organization and ensuring plans are in place to standardize quality among locations. The First Choice Emergency Room was the first freestanding ED in the country to receive The Joint Commission's Gold Seal of Approval, according to the provider's website. First Choice Emergency Room was founded in 2002 and has locations throughout Texas and Colorado.
Donald Kennerly, MD, PhD. Chief Quality Officer at Baylor Health Care System and Chief Patient Safety Officer for Baylor Scott & White Health (Dallas). As leader of quality at Baylor Health Care, Dr. Kennerly helped the system develop and implement programs aimed at attaining "no preventable deaths, no preventable injures and no preventable risk," the system's quality vision. As chief patient safety officer for Baylor Scott & White Health, Dr. Kennerly has led quality and patient safety integration between Baylor Health Care System and Scott & White Healthcare, creating best practices and appropriate quality governance to ensure quality and safety are first priorities for the new system. In addition to leading the implementation of important patient safety programs, Dr. Kennerly has contributed to the literature related to developing and using trigger tools to detect, quantify and characterize adverse events. He has served as chair of the Executive Committee of the Dallas-Fort Worth Hospital Council Data Initiative, a nationally prominent regional data sharing collaborative and also as a member of a National Quality Forum Patient Safety panel.
Joe Kiani. Founder of the Patient Safety Movement Foundation. In addition to founding the Patient Safety Movement Foundation in 2013. The mission of the PSMF is to create unity among healthcare entities to identify the sources of patient harms, promote transparency and promote patient safety. Mr. Kiani is responsible for founding the Patient Safety Science & Technology Summit. The first summit set a goal of zero patient deaths by the year 2020. He is also founder and CEO of Masimo, which he founded in 1989 to improve the accuracy of noninvasive patient monitoring. He works with lawmakers to shape policy around healthcare safety, and he is winner of the 2012 Ernst & Young National Entrepreneur of the Year Life Sciences Award winner.
Richard Kronick, PhD, Director for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Dr. Kronick joined AHRQ in 2010 as deputy assistant secretary for planning and evaluation and head of the Office of Health Policy. His work in the office was crucial to the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. In addition to his current position at AHRQ, which has a mission to make patient care safer through research and the dissemination of knowledge, he sits on the board of governors for the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Initiative. Before joining HHS, Dr. Kronick was a professor and chief of the Division of Health Care Sciences in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine at the University of California, San Diego.
Lucian Leape, MD. Chairman of the Lucian Leape Institute at the National Patient Safety Foundation (Boston). Dr. Leape is chairman of the National Patient Safety Foundation's Lucian Leape Institute, which he established with the organization in 2007 to further strategic thinking in patient safety. He is also a founder of the NSPF, in addition to founding the Massachusetts Coalition for the Prevention of Medical Error and the Harvard Kennedy School Executive Session on Medical Error. Dr. Leape is the 2001 winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Institute for Safe Medication Practices and the 2004 winner of the John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety and Quality Award in 2004. He is also an adjunct professor of health policy in the department of health policy and management at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.
Jeffrey C. Lerner, PhD. President and CEO of ECRI. ECRI (formerly the Emergency Care Research Institute) is an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality-certified patient safety organization. Dr. Lerner oversees activities at ECRI, which is focused on assessing technology to improve patient safety and healthcare. Before serving as ECRI's president, Dr. Lerner was vice president for strategic planning at the organization, helping ECRI move from a medical device evaluation center to an organization with a broader focus, including clinical procedures and drug therapies. In addition, he was the first director of ECRI Institute's Evidence-based Practice Center and coordinator of the Technical Expert Panel of the National Guideline Clearinghouse. He is a frequent contributor to journal articles discussing the effects the politics of medicine have on patient safety and healthcare quality.
Marty Makary, MD. Dr. Makary is the author of "Unaccountable: What Hospitals Won't Tell You and How Transparency Can Revolutionize Health Care," an exposé of the failures of the American health system published in 2013. Dr. Makary was also one of the original authors on the checklist later adapted and adopted by the World Health Organization, where he spearheaded the committee to develop global surgical quality metrics. Additionally, he is a speaker on accountability and transparency in medicine, serving on the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program and appearing on CNN and Fox News as a commentator. Dr. Makary is a researcher at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore and director of the Johns Hopkins Pancreas Islet Transplantation Center. He is also a practicing surgical oncologist, specializing in laparoscopic surgery.
Jennie Mayfield, BSN, MPH, CIC. President of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Prevention. In addition to her position at APIC, Ms. Mayfield is a clinical epidemiologist at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in Saint Louis, where she focuses on infection prevention in cancer patients. She has worked in infection prevention for more than 26 years, 24 of which she has also been an APIC member. She is the winner of the 2005 Advanced Practice Infection Control Professional Award from the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America and the 2007 APIC Hero of Infection Prevention Award.
Tammi Minnier, RN, MSN, FACHE. Chief Quality Officer for UPMC (Pittsburgh). Before her current position, Ms. Minnier was vice president of patient care services and CNO at UPMC Shadyside. She is the creator of the Clinical Design Initiative at the hospital, a program to increase time clinicians spend with patients, improve patient care and reinvest in patient care. As a result of the program, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement chose the hospital as one of three nationwide to participate in the Transforming Care at the Bedside Initiative. Ms. Minnier is also responsible for several other nationally recognized patient safety innovations at the UPMC hospitals. She is president of UPMC subsidiary Sim Medical, a program for the creation and implementation of integrated healthcare simulation training.
Elizabeth Mort, MD. Senior Vice President for Quality and Safety at Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston). Dr. Mort is the second person to occupy her role at Massachusetts General. Dr. Mort is responsible for supporting and maintaining the unique leadership structure Massachusetts General has successfully instituted to prioritize patient safety. Dr. Mort researches clinical decision making and quality improvement. In addition to her role in safety and quality, Dr. Mort is also associate CMO at Massachusetts General.
Frank Overdyk, MD, MSEE. Executive Director for Research at North American Partners in Anesthesia. Dr. Overdyk is an expert on inpatient harms resulting from misuse of opiates, particularly where it concerns patient-controlled analgesia practices. He has conducted original research and has authored numerous articles on patient subgroups most at risk for this adverse event. He is responsible for organizing the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation conference in 2011, at which stakeholders set a "zero tolerance" consensus for opioid harms. The conference was partially responsible for The Joint Commission's 2012 sentinel alert on the subject. Dr. Overdyk is also a professor and executive director for research and quality at the Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine in Hempstead, N.Y.
Peter Pronovost, MD. Senior Vice President for Patient Safety and Quality at Johns Hopkins Medicine (Baltimore). In addition to his title of senior vice president for patient safety and quality, Dr. Pronovost is also director of the Johns Hopkins' Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality. Dr. Provonost is responsible for the creation of the five-step checklist to prevent central line-associated bloodstream infections and is the author of a 2010 book, "Safe Patients, Smart Hospitals: How One Doctor's Checklist Can Help Us Change Health Care from the Inside Out." He is also an author on more than 500 articles on patient safety and safety measurement. He is 2004 recipient of the John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety and Quality Award, a 2008 MacArthur fellow and was recently named a Gilman Scholar, an internal award given to the Johns Hopkins faculty or staff member promoting the highest standards in scholarship and research.
Gina Pugliese, RN, MS. Vice President of the Premier Safety Institute (Charlotte, N.C.). Ms. Pugliese is vice president of the Premier Safety Institute, which is part of the Premier healthcare alliance. She also edits its online newsletter, SafetyShare and curates web content for the PSI. She is a senior associate editor for the journal Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology. She is an associate faculty member at Rush University College of Nursing in Chicago and is adjunct faculty in the division of epidemiology and biostatistics for the University of Illinois School of Public Health in Chicago.
Ruth Ragusa, RN. Vice President of Organizational Effectiveness at South Nassau Communities Hospital (Oceanside, N.Y.). Ms. Ragusa leads SNCH in all quality, safety, improvement and risk management initiatives. She joined SNCH in 2001 as vice president of performance improvement. Her more than 20 years of healthcare administration experience have been focused in nursing quality, performance management and organizational effectiveness. Ms. Ragusa is a member of the Association of Healthcare Quality Professionals and American College of Healthcare Executives. Under Ms. Ragusa's leadership, South Nassau Hospital was the first hospital in New York to earn wound care certification from the Joint Commission. The hospital has also earned recognition from The Joint Commission for exemplary performance in using evidence-based clinical and a 5-star rating from Healthgrades, among other distinctions.
Charles Riccobono, MD. Vice President and Chief Quality & Patient Safety Officer at Hackensack (N.J.) University Medical Center. Dr. Charles Riccobono is also the creator and chairman of the Performance Improvement Department at HackensackUMC. Under his leadership, the hospital implemented the Institute for Healthcare Improvement Pursuing Perfection Initiative and was the national leader in quality results in the CMS Demonstration. He also led the hospital in joining a collaborative with Harvard Business School in Boston and the IHI Cost & Quality initiative to improve the value of care at HackensackUMC. Dr. Riccobono is a member of the Quality Leadership Network and a charter member of the Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute's Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program collaborative network. Dr. Riccobono is a board-certified gastroenterologist, past division chief of gastroenterology and vice chairman of the Department of Internal Medicine at HackensackUMC. He is a clinical associate professor of medicine at Rutgers Medical School in New Jersey.
Eric Schneider, MD, Editor of the International Journal of Quality in Healthcare. In addition to his role as editor of the International Journal of Quality in Healthcare, a peer-reviewed journal on research related to quality outcomes for patient populations, Dr. Schneider is an associate professor of medicine in the department of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston and associate physician in the division of general medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. Dr. Schneider's research focuses on measurements in quality in safety as well as healthcare delivery and preventative services. He teaches quality improvement in healthcare at the Harvard School of Public Health and has collaborated on quality measures with the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Committee for Quality Assurance, among other organizations.
Susan E. Sheridan, MBA, MIM. Director of Patient Engagement at the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute. Ms. Sheridan is responsible for engaging patients to provide input on PCORI research. She is also co-founder and past president of Consumers Advancing Patient Safety, an organization to improve communication among patients and providers for safety. She served in this capacity between 2003 and 2010. She is also a past leader of the World Health Organization's Patient Safety Initiative, which she spearheaded from 2004 to 2011.
Kaveh G. Shojania, MD. Editor-in-Chief of BMJ Quality & Safety. Dr. Shojania is a scientist at the Sunnybrook Research Institute in Toronto, Canada. Among his other appointments, he is director for the Centre for Patient Safety at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on patient safety, quality improvement and knowledge transfer and evidence synthesis. He has written a book on patient safety, Internal Bleeding: The Truth Behind America's Terrifying Epidemic of Medical Mistakes and led the production of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality report Making Healthcare Safer, which synthesized evidence supporting a large number of patient safety practices. Dr. Shojania was made editor of BJM Quality & Safety in 2011.
Robert K. Stoelting, MD. President of the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation. Before becoming full-time president of the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation in 2003, Dr. Stoelting was a professor and chair of the department of anesthesia at the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, where he had been on the faculty since 1970. The APSF is devoted to research, education and idea exchanges surrounding patient safety during anesthesia care. The organization issues grants to applicants seeking to perform research on topics at the intersection of anesthesia and patient safety.
Andrew J. Sussman, MD, MBA. President of MinuteClinic and Senior Vice President and Associate CMO at CVS Caremark. Dr. Sussman heads the second largest retail pharmacy chain in the U.S. Under his leadership, MinuteClinic has expanded its clinical services and affiliated with 25 medical centers to improve patients' access to medical treatment. In addition, MinuteClinic became the first retail pharmacy chain to implement the "Ask Me 3" health literacy program for patients in collaboration with the National Patient Safety Foundation. Prior to his post at MinuteClinic, Dr. Sussman was executive vice president and COO of UMass Memorial Medical Center and an associate professor of medicine at the UMass Medical School, both in Worcester, Mass. He is a member of the board of the National Patient Safety Foundation.
Gail L. Warden, MHA. President Emeritus of Henry Ford Health System (Detroit) and Professor at University of Michigan School of Public Health (Ann Arbor). Mr. Warden is an individual winner of a 2013 Eisenberg Award for lifetime achievement in patient safety and quality of care. Mr. Warden served as president and CEO of Henry Ford Health System from 1988 to 2003. Before that, he served in a variety of executive positions at other hospitals and health systems. Mr. Warden currently chairs the Institute of Medicine's Committee on the Future of Emergency Care in the United States Health System. He also chairs the board of the National Quality Forum, the Healthcare Research and Development Institute and the National Center for Healthcare Leadership. He is a member of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Board of Trustees, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement Board and the RAND Health Board of Advisors. He is director emeritus and past chairman of the board of the National Committee on Quality Assurance.
Janet Woodcock, MD. Director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. Dr. Woodcock leads the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research at the Food and Drug Administration. The center evaluates the safety of over-the-counter and prescription drugs, provides healthcare professionals with information for drug use, ensures drug safety and polices drug quality. Dr. Woodcock is responsible for the introduction of risk management as an approach to drug safety in 2000. Recently, she launched the "Safety First" and "Safe Use" initiatives to improve medication management both in and out of the FDA. Before her current position, she served as CDA's deputy commissioner and CMO. She has been at the FDA since 1986.
Ronald Wyatt, MD, MHA. Medical Director of the Division of Healthcare Improvement at The Joint Commission (Oakbrook Terrace, Ill.). Dr. Wyatt is the lead resource on patient safety for The Joint Commission, where he works to improve quality and patient safety internally, externally and through legislation. Dr. Wyatt has been a part of the development of National Patient Safety Goals, and he oversees management of the Joint Commission's sentinel event database. He has previously served as director of the Patient Safety Analysis Center at the Department of Defense, creating the DoD Patient Safety Registries for tracking adverse events. He is a board-certified internist.
Joan Wynn, PhD. Chief Quality and Safety Officer for Vidant Health (Greenville, N.C.). Dr. Wynn led Vidant Health to a local-level 2013 Eisenberg award from The Joint Commission and the National Quality Forum, a national award for innovations in patient safety and quality of care. Dr. Wynn assumed her position in 2007 after serving as vice president for corporate quality at Vidant. She has been at the system since 1990, starting as a clinical nurse specialist. She joined UHS in 2004 as an administrator of corporate quality.