Representing a wide range of roles across hospitals, health systems and healthcare companies, these patient safety experts are united by their unwavering commitment to ensuring that every patient receives safe, effective care. Their work touches every corner of the care continuum, from preventable harm reduction and complex disease management to disaster preparedness.
Beyond just following policy and protocol, these leaders continuously question the status quo, engineer smarter processes, and hold their organizations to ever-higher standards.
Note: Becker’s Healthcare developed this list based on nominations and editorial research. This list is not exhaustive, nor is it an endorsement of included leaders or associated healthcare providers. Leaders cannot pay for inclusion on this list. Leaders are presented in alphabetical order. We extend a special thank you to Rhoda Weiss for her contributions to this list.
Contact Anna Falvey at afalvey@beckershealthcare.com with questions or comments.
Cynthia Adams. Lean Six Sigma Program Director of Quality Programs at Harris Health (Houston). Ms. Adams leads a portfolio of more than 35 systemwide patient safety and quality improvement initiatives at Harris Health, applying Lean Six Sigma, high-reliability principles, and human factors expertise across the organization. She spearheaded an enterprisewide transformation of the health system’s Leapfrog hospital safety grade performance, establishing standardized governance structures, evidence-based gap closure processes, and accountable ownership across clinical and operational leaders. Under her direction, Harris Health Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital in Houston improved its Leapfrog score from a “C” grade to an “A” grade, while Houston-based Harris Health Ben Taub Hospital improved from a “C” to a “B” grade. Ms. Adams also led the systemwide redesign of patient safety indicator governance and review processes, improving consistency in event identification, adjudication and corrective action. She co-led a Lean Six Sigma training program that graduated 13 “Yellow Belt” cohorts, comprising 385 staff members, and one “Green Belt” cohort of 13, significantly expanding frontline safety capability across the organization. Harris Health earned Magnet redesignation at both Lyndon B. Johnson and Ben Taub hospitals in 2025, recognitions to which her work in safety governance and high-reliability practices contributed.
Jason Adelman, MD. Associate Dean for Quality and Patient Safety, and Director of the Center for Patient Safety Science at Columbia University Irving Medical Center (New York City). Dr. Adelman is a nationally recognized patient safety researcher and physician leader whose work focuses on identifying and evaluating quality initiatives at multicenter hospital systems, including the application of AI to improve patient care. At Columbia University Irving Medical Center, he serves as associate dean for quality and patient safety, director of the Center for Patient Safety Science, program director of the patient safety research fellowship, and vice chair for quality and patient safety in the department of medicine. He also serves as system associate chief quality officer for patient safety and learning health system science at New York City-based NewYork-Presbyterian. His body of research on health IT safety and the epidemiology of medical errors produced the validated and National Quality Forum-endorsed “Wrong-Patient Retract-and-Reorder Measure,” which has shaped national patient safety recommendations and regulations from The Joint Commission and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. Dr. Adelman has received numerous grants and awards, including the “John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety and Quality Award” for individual lifetime achievement from The Joint Commission and the “John M. Eisenberg Excellence in Mentorship Award” from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
Nicole Alerding, MSN, RN. Director of Performance Improvement and Patient Safety Officer at Roxborough Memorial Hospital (Philadelphia). At Roxborough Memorial Hospital, Ms. Alerding oversees patient safety and performance improvement initiatives. She coordinates and manages hospitalwide programs, ensuring ongoing survey readiness and overseeing quality measures, including core measures and patient satisfaction. By collaborating closely with administration, she facilitates the execution and communication of performance improvement activities across departments. Her contributions have led to multiple “A” ratings from The Leapfrog Group, underscoring her commitment to high-quality patient care. In 2026, Healthgrades recognized Roxborough Memorial Hospital with the “Patient Safety Excellence Award,” with the hospital and other honorees seeing markedly lower risks in-hospital fall resulting in fracture, collapsed lung due to a procedure in or around the chest, catheter-related bloodstream infections acquired in the hospital, pressure sores or bed sores acquired in the hospital, and various other measures.
Laura Arline, MD. Chief Quality Officer at BayCare Health System (Clearwater, Fla.). Dr. Arline leads systemwide efforts to advance patient safety, quality and high reliability at BayCare Health System, a 16-hospital system that delivers approximately one-third of healthcare services in the Tampa Bay region. She oversees clinical analytics, quality, regulatory readiness, infection prevention and the system’s “Just Culture” program, and spearheads BayCare’s zero harm commitment through safety tiered huddles that connect frontline teams to senior leadership. Dr. Arline led the creation of a board safety curriculum to equip BayCare board members to provide informed oversight of patient safety outcomes, and launched a direct-to-patient safety survey through the system’s patient and family advisory council. She doubled the safety coach program to more than 500 trained coaches across the system, contributing to a 75% participation rate in the 2025 “Culture of Safety” survey. In fall 2025, 11 of BayCare’s 12 eligible hospitals earned an “A” safety grade from The Leapfrog Group, with nine receiving straight A grades.
Patty Atkins, RN. Quality and Patient Safety Executive for Adventist Health (Roseville, Calif.). Patty Atkins serves as the quality and patient safety executive at Adventist Health. Her responsibilities include overseeing quality in both acute care and ambulatory care, leading systemwide high reliability strategy, strengthening safety event management and learning systems, advancing just and accountable culture, and supporting innovation that improves reliability and performance. She also helps guide the use of AI to enhance safety event management and organizational learning across the enterprise. Under her leadership, the system has achieved meaningful gains in nationally recognized quality and safety performance, including gains in CMS hospital star ratings. In her current role, the system increased the number of hospitals earning Leapfrog “A” or “B” grades by 50%. Most recently, she has been leading the integration of AI into the high reliability platform, a reporting and learning system that helps make safety systems smarter, more efficient and more effective. During her time at San Diego-based Sharp HealthCare, she served as vice president of quality, patient safety and Lean Six Sigma, helping lead high reliability efforts that reduced preventable harm by 80% in three years.
Lalit Bajaj, MD. Chief Quality Officer at Children’s Hospital Colorado (Aurora). Dr. Bajaj leads the division of quality at Children’s Hospital Colorado, which he formed by consolidating the departments of patient safety, clinical effectiveness and health equity under a single organizational structure to reflect his view that these domains are interdependent and must be addressed collectively. He collaborates closely with the chief medical officer and CNO on systemwide initiatives, and has built cross-functional partnerships with patient-family experience, performance improvement, analytics, IT, community health and advocacy teams. Dr. Bajaj co-developed and now leads the Pediatric Care Network, a clinically integrated network designed to align community pediatric practices with hospital care transitions and quality priorities. He also shaped the early development of the Children’s Colorado Research Institute and led the creation of the department of clinical effectiveness, which has driven major initiatives including diagnostic safety and population health advancements. Dr. Bajaj has also worked closely with payers to align financial incentives with patient-centered goals, with the aim of reducing hospital-acquired conditions and unnecessary utilization. Children’s Hospital Colorado has been named to the U.S. News & World Report honor roll and designated the No. 1 children’s hospital in the Rocky Mountain region for multiple consecutive years.
Mahmoud Bakeer, MD. Assistant Vice President of Orlando (Fla.) Health and Chief Quality Officer for Orlando Health South Lake Hospital (Clermont, Fla.). Dr. Bakeer oversees the quality and safety of all hospital programs and services, ensuring high standards of patient care and compliance with regulatory requirements. Under his leadership, Orlando Health South Lake has received numerous accolades, including the U.S. News & World Report high performing hospital rating in six procedures and conditions for 2025-26 and 16 consecutive “A” hospital safety grades from The Leapfrog Group. He has played a pivotal role in developing critical care programs and structured quality departments across Orlando Health, significantly improving patient outcomes and hospital performance. Dr. Bakeer continues to practice as a critical care specialist, maintaining a direct connection to patient care.
Tom Bates, RN. Chief Quality Officer at Keck Medicine of USC (Los Angeles). Mr. Bates founded the Keck Medicine of USC Quality Institute and co-created the Keck Academy for Continuous Improvement, instilling a culture of excellence throughout the health system. Under his leadership, the system has achieved repeated CMS 5-star ratings, Leapfrog “A” grades, and Vizient “Top Performer” status. He is a master trainer in TeamSTEPPS, an evidence-based teamwork system, and the just culture system of shared accountability. His leadership emphasizes staff empowerment and systems learning. Mr. Bates also serves on the editorial board of Management in Healthcare. He brings a background in both nursing and administration, having previously served as executive administrator for quality and outcomes and CNO at other Southern California institutions.
Sigall K. Bell, MD. Director of Patient Safety and Discovery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center OpenNotes (Boston). Dr. Bell is director of patient safety and discovery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center’s OpenNotes, a patient-facing information sharing platform. She is also a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. She has pioneered research in open notes and diagnostic safety, including the development of the “OurDX” diagnostic engagement tool. Dr. Bell has trained over 1,000 clinicians in disclosure practices and co-developed metrics to evaluate speaking-up climates in healthcare. Her research has earned national awards and shaped patient safety policy at Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the National Quality Forum and beyond. A sought-after mentor and speaker, she also co-directs The Transparency CoLAB, which fosters collaborations between Harvard and Stanford medical schools.
Leah Binder. President and CEO of The Leapfrog Group (Washington, D.C.). As president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group, Ms. Binder serves as a voice for those calling for increased hospital safety and quality. Under her guidance, The Leapfrog Group launched the “Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade,” which assesses the safety of general hospitals nationwide and presents the information in an easily digestible format. She has also greatly improved the yearly hospital survey.
Jeffrey Boord, MD. Chief Quality and Safety Officer at Parkview Health (Fort Wayne, Ind.). Dr. Boord has served as Parkview Health’s chief quality and safety officer since 2015, providing oversight of quality management, accreditation, medical staff services, infection prevention and workplace safety across a 15-hospital nonprofit community health system with more than 17,500 employees. His most recent systemwide focus has been hand hygiene compliance, which rose from approximately 89-91% in the first half of 2024 to sustained rates of 95-96% by mid-2025, supported by an increase in monthly observations from roughly 12,500 to more than 18,000. In fall 2025, five of Parkview’s seven eligible Indiana hospitals earned “A” safety grades from The Leapfrog Group, representing five of the 15 “A” grades awarded statewide. Parkview’s flagship hospital, Parkview Regional Medical Center, has received 23 “A” grades out of its last 25 Leapfrog report cards. Dr. Boord has also driven measurable workforce safety improvements, with the system’s OSHA-recordable injury rate declining from 4.9 incidents per 100 full-time employees in 2014 to 3.6 in 2025. Meanwhile the days away, restricted, or transferred rate fell from 2.9 to 1.6 over the same period. He is currently leading a systemwide workplace violence prevention initiative that includes new risk analysis tools and a reporting system for identifying trends.
Patrick J. Brennan, MD. Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer for University of Pennsylvania Health System, Penn Medicine (Philadelphia). Dr. Brennan serves as senior vice president and chief medical officer of the University of Pennsylvania Health System, where he oversees healthcare quality, patient safety, regulatory affairs and medical affairs across seven hospitals and an extensive outpatient network delivering millions of visits annually. He leads systemwide initiatives to strengthen clinical accountability, regulatory readiness and measurable improvements in patient outcomes across a $12.5 billion academic health enterprise with more than 50,000 faculty and staff. An infectious diseases specialist, Dr. Brennan previously chaired the healthcare infection control practices advisory committee, advising senior U.S. health officials on national infection prevention and disease control policy. His expertise in infection control and public health has shaped operational strategy across Penn Medicine and informed leadership roles at various hospitals across the system. He also serves on the inaugural board of health for the Delaware County Health Department, extending his impact into regional public health governance. In addition, Dr. Brennan serves as the official host city medical lead for FIFA World Cup 26 Philadelphia, overseeing medical planning and coordination for one of the world’s largest sporting events.
Kevin M. Bush Jr., EdD. Administrative Director of Perioperative Services at ChristianaCare Health System (Newark, Del.). Dr. Bush provides executive oversight for perioperative strategy, quality improvement, practice standardization, regulatory compliance and sterile processing operations across three acute care hospitals and multiple ambulatory sites at ChristianaCare. He serves as a strategic liaison between procedural leaders and health system leadership, aligning perioperative performance with enterprise priorities in patient safety and operational excellence. His expertise in infection prevention includes published research on sterile processing, notably the “Lumens 2.0” study, which examined hidden challenges in cleaning lumened surgical instruments, and scholarship on enhancing compliance with the surgical safety checklist through implementation science. Dr. Bush has led successful Joint Commission survey activities and has taught more than 100 students in areas including asepsis, perioperative practice, healthcare leadership and health policy. He serves as an associate professor at the University of Maryland Global Campus and is a recipient of the American College of Healthcare Executives “Thomas C. Dolan Scholar” award.
Stephanie Calcasola, MSN, RN. Chief Quality Officer at Hartford (Conn.) HealthCare. Ms. Calcasola leads quality outcomes and patient safety strategy across Hartford HealthCare’s eight acute care hospitals and more than 500 locations, overseeing processes to monitor, measure and improve key quality performance indicators. Under her leadership, Hartford HealthCare was the only health system in the nation to receive the American Heart Association “Quest for Quality Prize” in 2025. Twice in the past three years, all seven eligible Hartford HealthCare hospitals earned “A” safety grades from The Leapfrog Group, and the system has received more than 80 specialty excellence awards from Healthgrades. Hartford HealthCare was also named “Innovator of the Year” by Press Ganey in 2026. Ms. Calcasola previously served as vice president of quality and safety at Hartford HealthCare from 2017 to 2024 before being elevated to her current role. The system has also received an award from Costs of Care and Leapfrog for enhancing excellence and affordability, and earned a perfect 3-star rating in all five cardiothoracic categories from the Society for Thoracic Surgery for several consecutive periods.
Aaron Calhoun, MD. President of the Society for Simulation in Healthcare (Washington, D.C.). Dr. Calhoun is the president of the Society for Simulation in Healthcare for 2026, and has served on its board of directors since 2019. The organization is dedicated to improving patient safety through simulation-based education and research, helping shape education and practices on a global level. He also serves as the associate editor-in-chief for Simulation in Healthcare, the primary journal in the medical simulation field. Dr. Calhoun is also a tenured professor in the department of pediatrics at the University of Louisville and an attending physician in the Just for Kids Critical Care Center at Louisville, Ky.-based Norton Children’s Hospital. Dr. Calhoun is the division chief of pediatric critical care, and senior advisor for the “SPARC” simulation program at Norton Children’s Hospital. He has numerous publications in the field of simulation and medical education.
April Carmack. System Director of Patient Safety at SSM Health (St. Louis). Ms. Carmack leads patient safety strategy across SSM Health’s multi-state system spanning Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin and Oklahoma, working with clinical, operational and continuous improvement leaders to embed safety practices at every level of the organization. Since joining SSM Health in December 2024, she redesigned the system’s daily safety huddles into a tiered accountability framework flowing from the unit level to senior leadership, and developed a huddle maturity dashboard to give leaders visibility into where safety conversations are thriving. She standardized event investigation processes using learning teams and root cause analyses and actions methodology, and deployed safety behaviors to bedside caregivers through mandatory training complemented by the “HeRO” recognition program. In her first year, these efforts produced measurable results: an 18% increase in near-miss reporting, a 7% increase in overall safety event reporting, a 20% reduction in sentinel events and a 40% improvement in root cause analysis timeliness. Ms. Carmack has published peer-reviewed research in the Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety, Patient Safety and the AORN Journal.
Corey Champeau. Vice President of Quality and Safety at Yale New Haven (Conn.) Health. Ms. Champeau leads systemwide patient safety and quality strategy for Yale New Haven Health, overseeing clinical and operational excellence across hospital and ambulatory settings. Drawing on her clinical background in neonatal care, she has spent nearly two decades advancing safety culture and high reliability principles in major academic health systems. In her role, Ms. Champeau fosters daily engagement in safety through education, transparent data sharing and the empowerment of frontline leaders. Her efforts have contributed to national rankings for Yale New Haven Hospital and accolades from Forbes, U.S. News & World Report and Vizient. She also represents the system in communications with CMS and performance measurement systems, all while serving in several national safety leadership roles. Ms. Champeau is certified in healthcare quality and safety and a fellow of the Greater New York Hospital Association.
Phillip Chang, MD. Chief Medical and Quality Officer at CommonSpirit Health (Chicago). Dr. Chang leads CommonSpirit Health’s systemwide quality and safety strategy, overseeing how care quality is delivered, measured and improved across one of the nation’s largest health systems. He partners with clinical and quality leaders to accelerate performance improvement, strengthen credentialing and peer review, and advance clinician wellness, engagement and development. He has also helped drive multi-year clinical gains, including improved blood pressure control for more than 130,000 patients and improved diabetes control for 35,000 patients, along with reductions in mortality for heart failure, stroke and percutaneous coronary intervention and decreases in hospital-acquired infections. A trauma and general surgeon by training, Dr. Chang is known for applying standard improvement methodologies to create durable, systemwide change rather than isolated wins. Nationally, he serves as chair of the Association of American Medical Colleges CMO group steering committee and sits on a Vizient steering committee for benchmarking and ranking.
Maitreya “Trey” Coffey, MD. Chief Quality Officer at Nationwide Children’s Hospital (Columbus, Ohio). Dr. Coffey leads the Center for Clinical Excellence at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, overseeing a systemwide quality improvement program supporting more than 280 active projects, many of which represent cross-program collaborations. The center has trained more than 2,000 learners over 14 years via programs ranging from its quality improvement bootcamp to the Quality Leadership Academy, a hybrid program developed with national and international partners. The center has also contributed to more than 30 peer-reviewed publications in the past five years through its quality improvement publishing program. Dr. Coffey has embedded structured improvement methodologies into daily clinical practice and helped Nationwide Children’s maintain recognition as a top 10 children’s hospital by U.S. News & World Report for 12 consecutive years, as well as No. 1 in Ohio and the Midwest. Prior to joining Nationwide Children’s in 2025, she served as inaugural associate chief medical officer for medical affairs and quality at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada. She also spent a decade as medical officer for patient safety and medical lead of the “Caring Safely” program there. She is a professor at The Ohio State University College of Medicine, a certified physician executive and a member of the clinical steering team for the Solutions for Patient Safety network.
William Cooper, MD. Senior Vice President for Professionalism and Clinical Excellence at Vanderbilt Health (Nashville, Tenn.). Dr. Cooper leads one of the first senior leadership positions in the country dedicated specifically to professionalism and clinical excellence within a health system, overseeing initiatives that promote high standards of performance among faculty, clinical staff, trainees and students across Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s education, research and clinical areas. He has been involved with the Vanderbilt “Professionalism Assessment and Reporting System” program since 2009, and serves as chair of Vanderbilt’s professionalism committee. As an internationally recognized expert in medication safety in children, Dr. Cooper has published more than 100 scholarly articles. He is the lead author of a 2017 study published in JAMA Surgery that demonstrates the relationship between unsolicited patient complaints and increased risk for postoperative complications, findings with significant implications for quality and safety improvement. Earlier in his career he led the Center for Patient and Professional Advocacy and the Master of Public Health program at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.
Amy Cotton, DNP. Senior Vice President of Quality and Safety at RWJBarnabas Health (West Orange, N.J.). Dr. Cotton leads systemwide quality and patient safety initiatives for RWJBarnabas Health, overseeing strategy, regulatory compliance and high-reliability programming across New Jersey’s largest academic health system. She is a driving force behind the “Safety Together” initiative, which promotes a culture of zero harm and operational excellence across acute and outpatient settings. Her strategic vision has led to the standardization of best practices and improvements in infection prevention, accreditation readiness and clinical outcomes. A member of the American Academy of Nursing’s acute care quality expert panel, Dr. Cotton also brings decades of experience from leadership roles at Pittsburgh-based Allegheny Health Network and Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA Healthcare. Her career achievements include year-over-year performance gains in patient experience and quality metrics across diverse care settings.
Samantha Crandall, PhD, RN. Senior Vice President of Quality and Patient Safety at GBMC HealthCare (Baltimore). Dr. Crandall was named to her current role in January 2026, taking responsibility for upholding the performance excellence and quality management standards that made GBMC HealthCare the first healthcare system in Maryland to receive the presidential “Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.” She brings extensive experience in advancing patient safety, quality outcomes and performance improvement across complex healthcare systems, with expertise in Lean methodology, risk management and interdisciplinary collaboration. Most recently, Dr. Crandall served as director of quality, patient safety and clinical performance improvement at Bethesda, Md.-based Suburban Hospital, a member of Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Medicine, where she led the strategic integration of quality and safety functions, implemented high-reliability practices and drove measurable improvements in patient outcomes, including significant reductions in hospital-acquired infections and mortality rates. Earlier in her career, she led patient safety and risk assessment initiatives at several California hospitals, where she increased safety event reporting and developed staff training programs.
Cara Cruz. Director of Risk and Quality at Carson Valley Health (Gardnerville, Nev.). Ms. Cruz serves as director of risk and quality, infection control officer and patient safety officer at Carson Valley Health, a critical access hospital. There, she oversees risk management, patient advocacy, compliance, infection control, emergency preparedness and clinical analytics. She led Carson Valley Health’s overall readmission rate from 15.5% in 2018 to 13.9% through a multidisciplinary focus group and targeted reduction program, contributing to the hospital’s CMS star rating improving from two stars in 2022 to five stars in 2026. The hospital was also recognized by the CDC as one of only 12 critical access hospitals in the nation meeting best practices in all seven elements of antimicrobial stewardship, and was invited to help develop CDC guidelines for rural hospitals. Ms. Cruz was selected as one of 12 national critical access hospital quality mentors by Stratis Health from 2022 to 2024. In addition to being a registered nurse, she also brings expertise in healthcare quality, infection control and healthcare risk management.
Cynthia Cuddy, RN. Senior Vice President of Quality and Patient Safety, Clinical and Academic Affairs at Westchester Medical Center Health Network (Valhalla, N.Y.). Ms. Cuddy provides senior executive vision, direction, leadership and administration for all programs related to quality and patient safety initiatives at Westchester. She leads the continuing development of quality infrastructure and ensures that resources are leveraged to maximize support of the network’s healthcare system. Ms. Cuddy engages clinical and operational stakeholders in a tertiary, quaternary care facility, where more than 50% of patients are transferred from outside hospitals. She also leads proactive patient safety initiatives to create high reliability hospitals, standardized practices, increase staff and physician engagement in safety culture, and reduce patient safety events, hospital acquired conditions and unsafe processes. Under her direction, frontline nursing and medical staff started directly engaging together in documenting and standardizing evidenced-based best practices to approach the complex care required for patients.
Lori Culloty, DNP. Safety Director at Corewell Health (Grand Rapids, Mich.). Dr. Culloty oversees patient and team member safety initiatives across Corewell Health’s 21-hospital system, including workplace safety partnerships with security and nursing leadership, development of systemwide safety policies, direction of “Culture of Safety” action plans, and collaboration with clinical risk and patient relations on safety events. She brings two decades of registered nursing experience with a primary focus on patient and team member safety, quality improvement, systems leadership and emergency nursing. In fall 2025, 75% of Corewell Health’s graded hospitals received an “A” or “B” safety grade from The Leapfrog Group, including Corewell Health Zeeland (Mich.) Hospital, which earned its 19th consecutive “A” for the longest active streak in Michigan. Healthgrades named Corewell Health Beaumont Troy (Mich.) Hospital as one of the nation’s 50 best hospitals for the 16th straight year, and Corewell Health Grand Rapids (Mich.) Hospital earned its third consecutive 5-star rating from CMS. Dr. Culloty previously served as regional director of patient safety in Southeast Michigan following the merger of Beaumont Health and Spectrum Health to create Corewell Health.
Shannon Davila Kooker, MSN, RN. Vice President of Clinical Excellence and Patient Safety at ECRI (Fort Washington, Pa.). At ECRI, a global patient safety nonprofit, Ms. Davila Kooker leads one of the nation’s largest federally designated Patient Safety Organizations. She pioneered ECRI’s SafeSystem Solutions to reduce patient harm and improve wellbeing for the healthcare workforce. She played a key role in national efforts advancing patient safety, such as the CMS patient safety structural measure. A published expert and frequent speaker, she sits on numerous professional advisory committees. Her work has been recognized by the National Academy of Medicine, the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, the White House and numerous industry publications.
Renee Demski. Executive Vice President of Quality, Patient Safety and Performance Excellence for Rochester (N.Y.) Regional Health. Ms. Demski oversees the Quality and Safety Institute, patient experience and performance excellence initiative across Rochester Regional’s hospitals and care delivery sites. Since joining the organization in 2023, she has developed a leadership and governance model for patient safety and quality, and has created and deployed an operating management system to integrate and align patient safety and quality principles to achieve high-quality care. She leads the organization’s focus on eliminating preventable harm, improving patient outcomes and experience, and improving operational efficiency. Under her leadership, hospital-acquired infection rates have dropped. Ms. Demski is a skilled executive with over 35 years of experience at Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Health System, where she held various leadership positions, including vice president of quality. She has been a national and international consultant in high-reliability safety and quality processes and performance.
Sonali Desai, MD. Vice President and Chief Quality Officer at Boston Medical Center Health System. Dr. Desai leads a systemwide quality and patient safety strategy at Boston Medical Center Health System, the largest essential hospital in New England, serving one of the most diverse urban patient populations in the country. She oversees all six domains of quality for safe, timely, effective, efficient, equitable and patient-centered care. She is also responsible for driving progress toward key institutional benchmarks, including achieving a CMS 4-star rating and sustaining Leapfrog “A” grades. Prior to joining Boston Medical Center, she spent nearly two decades at Boston-based Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where she rose to vice president of quality and associate chief medical officer and pioneered the integration of AI-enabled workflows in the EHR to proactively identify and mitigate patient risk. These innovations were later scaled across the broader Mass General Brigham system. Dr. Desai is the founding program director of Harvard Medical School’s safety, quality, informatics and leadership program, and has authored more than 50 peer-reviewed publications on quality and patient safety. She was recognized with the “Donabedian Award in Quality and Safety” from the American Public Health Association and serves as deputy editor for the International Journal for Quality in Health Care.
Ihab Dorotta, MD. Chief of Quality and Patient Safety and Chief of Clinical Operations for Loma Linda (Calif.) University Health. Dr. Dorotta leads Loma Linda University Health’s quality and safety programs, directing a team that follows protocols to minimize errors and improve outcomes. Appointed chief of quality and patient safety in 2017, his focus on root cause analysis and staff engagement has significantly reduced hospital-acquired infections. Dr. Dorotta’s emphasis on infection reduction methods and risk monitoring has resulted in the system’s hospitals achieving and maintaining top safety grades from The Leapfrog Group and receiving multiple Leapfrog Top Children’s Hospital awards. His use of staff education, process improvement, and high-tech tools has further reduced readmissions and patient complications. Dr. Dorotta is also the system’s chief of clinical operations and director of critical care services.
Jesse Ehrenfeld, MD. Global Chief Medical Officer at Aidoc (New York City). Dr. Ehrenfeld serves as global chief medical officer at Aidoc, bridging frontline clinical care with AI-driven solutions to improve diagnostic accuracy and patient outcomes. Additionally, he is a practicing anesthesiologist and a professor at the Medical College of Wisconsin. As the 178th president of the American Medical Association and its immediate past president, he has focused national policy attention on the ethical implementation of AI and the reduction of clinician burnout, which he identifies as a critical patient safety variable. He led the “Diagnostic Error Mortality Avoidance Estimation” project, developing a methodology that demonstrated AI-driven notification systems could prevent approximately 10% of misdiagnosis-related deaths annually. This work suggests the potential to save more than 41,000 lives per year at scale, across conditions such as intracranial hemorrhage, pulmonary embolism and aortic dissection. With more than 275 peer-reviewed manuscripts, Dr. Ehrenfeld’s research has consistently focused on how informatics can reduce intraoperative complications.
Lisa Esolen, MD. Executive Vice President, Chief Quality Officer at Guthrie (Sayre, Pa.). Dr. Esolen has helped develop Guthrie into a national leader in safety, quality and patient experience. To do so, she has defined next generation patient journeys, created transformational playbooks for quality and safety, improved clinical operations efficiency and developed a platform model for policies and procedures. In doing so, she has been able to create a unified, standardized process across the health system. Her efforts have led to consistent reductions in hospital-acquired infections, bringing them to historically low levels.
Stephanie Evans. Vice President and Chief Safety Officer at Arkansas Children’s (Little Rock). Ms. Evans provides systemwide strategic leadership for patient safety, clinical risk, patient relations, infection prevention, simulation education and the resuscitation quality program at Arkansas Children’s. She led the implementation and maturation of the “Watcher” early warning program, which strengthened identification of patients at risk for clinical deterioration through standardized criteria and real-time escalation workflows, contributing to earlier interventions and safer patient outcomes. Ms. Evans also implemented the “CANDOR” communication and optimal resolution program, embedding transparency and empathy into the organization’s response to adverse events while improving the timeliness and quality of cause analyses. Her collaboration with surgical teams to build communication and loop closure workflows was recognized by the American College of Surgeons during a children’s surgery verification program site visit. Under her leadership, Arkansas Children’s has demonstrated a reduction in preventable harm outcomes, and the organization has been nationally ranked in seven pediatric specialties by U.S. News & World Report.
Rollin J. “Terry” Fairbanks, MD. Senior Vice President and Chief Quality and Safety Officer for MedStar Health (Columbia, Md.). Dr. Fairbanks is a nationally renowned safety scientist who leads quality, safety and infection prevention for MedStar Health, bringing systems thinking and human factors engineering into real-world healthcare operations. As founding director of the National Center for Human Factors in Healthcare, he has secured millions in safety research funding and produced work that transformed EHR usability and medical device design globally. Under his leadership, the system achieved record-high quality performance, while innovations in event response and hazard identification set national benchmarks. His early work in emergency medical services and emergency pharmacy laid the groundwork for national safety programs. A fellow of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society and leader in multiple national safety organizations, Dr. Fairbanks has presented at global conferences and advised international health ministries.
Paula Ferrada, MD. Medical Director of Perioperative Services and Chair of Surgery at Inova Fairfax Medical Campus; System Chief of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery at Inova Health System (Falls Church, Va.). Dr. Ferrada provides physician leadership for a perioperative platform encompassing 56 operating rooms, 15 procedure rooms, more than 54,000 annual cases and more than 750 perioperative team members at Inova Fairfax Medical Campus. Under her leadership, first-case on-time surgical starts increased from 53% to 79% and delays greater than 60 minutes decreased from 11% to 6.8%, reflecting stronger operational discipline and improved patient flow. Her safety focus has produced measurable results including a 90% reduction in operating room burns and sustained zero retained surgical items across reporting periods. She reduced perioperative staff turnover to 6.9%, compared to a national benchmark above 20%, by replacing a culture of blame with psychological safety and accountability. Dr. Ferrada has authored more than 145 peer-reviewed publications, contributing to multicenter trials and guidelines that have influenced trauma care nationally. She currently serves as president-elect of the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma and as a governor of the American College of Surgeons.
Baruch Fertel, MD. Vice President of Quality and Safety at NewYork-Presbyterian (New York City). Dr. Fertel directs enterprisewide quality and safety initiatives at NewYork-Presbyterian, helping the health system maintain top-tier national performance. Under his leadership, the system has earned consistent CMS 5-star ratings, Leapfrog “A” safety grades and high Vizient rankings. He has strengthened collaboration between NewYork-Presbyterian, Weill Cornell Medicine and Columbia Doctors, driving cultural alignment on safety throughout the three New York City-based organizations. Dr. Fertel’s leadership has fostered deeper clinician engagement and advanced the system’s high-reliability goals. With his guidance, NYP-Weill Cornell received the Vizient “Rising Star” award.
Thomas H. Gallagher, MD. Executive Director of The Center for Harm Response (Seattle). Dr. Gallagher is a nationally and internationally recognized leader in patient safety and transparency, serving as executive director of The Center for Harm Response, a joint initiative of the Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute and the University of Washington. A practicing internal medicine physician and professor at the University of Washington, he has dedicated his career to transforming how healthcare organizations respond when patients are harmed, helping shift the national dialogue from defensiveness toward openness, healing and systemic learning. He is one of the country’s foremost experts in communication and resolution programs, and served as core faculty in the creation of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality “CANDOR” toolkit, one of the most widely disseminated resources for optimal communication after patient harm. Dr. Gallagher has authored more than 120 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters in journals, including JAMA and The New England Journal of Medicine, and contributed to the CMS patient safety structural measure as a member of its technical advisory panel. He received the “John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety and Quality Award” for individual achievement in 2017 and was named a Master of the American College of Physicians in 2019. As co-founder of the “Pathway to Accountability, Compassion and Transparency,” he continues to mentor organizations nationwide in principled, patient-centered harm response.
Tejal Gandhi, MD. Chief Safety and Transformation Officer at Press Ganey (South Bend, Ind.). Dr. Gandhi leads enterprise safety strategy at Press Ganey, guiding efforts to embed safety and reliability into governance, leadership and frontline operations across client health systems nationwide. In February 2026, she launched “Zero Harm 24/7,” a national initiative calling on healthcare CEOs and boards to eliminate preventable harm, drawing on safety culture data from more than one million healthcare workers surveyed annually to outline 10 commitments addressing persistent barriers to safety progress. She leads the Press Ganey Equity Partnership, a coalition focused on addressing care disparities, and has integrated an equity lens across the company’s products by enabling segmentation of safety and experience data by demographic groups. Dr. Gandhi has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed articles, including work in The New England Journal of Medicine, and her 2024 paper “Bringing the Equity Lens to Patient Safety Event Reporting” highlighted how bias in reporting processes can obscure risks for certain patient populations. She is a former president and CEO of the National Patient Safety Foundation and former chief clinical and safety officer of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and is a certified professional in patient safety and a member of the National Academy of Medicine.
Crystal Garcia, BSN, RN. Vice President of Specialty Services Quality and Safety at Valleywise Health (Phoenix). Ms. Garcia oversees quality management, regulatory compliance, infection prevention and performance excellence across Valleywise Health, Arizona’s leading public teaching hospital and safety net system. The system includes a newly opened 10-story acute care hospital, the Diane and Bruce Halle Arizona Burn Center, a level 1 trauma center, three psychiatric hospitals and a network of community health centers. She has implemented nationally recognized quality programs including the American College of Surgeon’s National Surgical Quality Improvement Program and the Vizient Clinical Database and Resource Management platform, driving measurable improvements in surgical outcomes, resource utilization and patient safety culture. Ms. Garcia oversaw the opening of the system’s first outpatient surgical center, ensuring quality assurance from the ground up, and has played a central role in preparing the organization for CMS, DNV and state surveys. Her efforts have improved Leapfrog performance metrics and positively impacted CMS hospital value-based purchasing results and HCAHPS patient experience scores.
Jeff Giullian, MD. CMO at DaVita (Denver). Dr. Giullian leads DaVita’s clinical strategy for kidney care, advancing quality, safety and value-based outcomes across the continuum of chronic kidney disease management. He has overseen the expansion of patient-centered tools like “Kidney Smart” and “DaVita Care Connect”, as well as the development of a tech-enabled chronic kidney disease EHR to support early diagnosis and treatment. Dr. Giullian’s leadership has driven a decline in hospitalizations and increased adoption of home dialysis, while also empowering physicians through the “OneView” platform and the Institute of Nephrology’s continuing medical education courses. He helped launch MedSleuth’s “BREEZE Transplant” platform to improve transplant readiness and co-led a national educational initiative with the American Diabetes Association. He is actively involved with the Renal Physicians Association and has supported curriculum development for first-generation healthcare students in Colorado.
Darlene Gondrella. Vice President of Quality at West Jefferson Medical Center (Marrero, La.). Ms. Gondrella brings more than 26 years of nursing experience to her role overseeing quality, risk management and infection prevention at West Jefferson Medical Center, where she has spent 20 years in progressively senior leadership positions. Over the course of her career at the hospital, she has managed departments including case management, guest services, patient experience and nurse education, bringing a broad operational foundation to her current quality leadership role. Ms. Gondrella was honored as a New Orleans CityBusiness “Healthcare Hero” in 2006, recognizing her contributions to the hospital and community.
Carmen Gonzalez, MD. Chief Patient Safety Officer for The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (Houston). Dr. Gonzalez leads patient safety initiatives at MD Anderson Cancer Center, working to eliminate preventable harm for cancer patients and co-leading various institutional safety, quality and high-reliability initiatives in addition to her role as a professor of emergency medicine. Under her leadership, MD Anderson has maintained a 5-star rating in Vizient’s oncology quality and accountability study for five consecutive years, ranking No. 6 in 2025 and standing as one of only four organizations to sustain a 5-star rating across that span. In parallel, the institution reduced its serious safety event rate to 0.28, an all-time low. MD Anderson has been ranked No. 1 in the nation for cancer care by U.S. News & World Report for 11 consecutive years and received its sixth consecutive Magnet recognition from the American Nurses Credentialing Center in 2025. Press Ganey awarded MD Anderson the 2025 “Serious Safety Event Rate” and “Guardian of Excellence” awards.
Jeremy Goodman, MD. Vice President and System Quality Officer at Baptist Health (Jacksonville, Fla.). Dr. Goodman oversees the effectiveness of clinical management, patient safety and performance improvement across Baptist Health’s six-hospital system, developing and strengthening clinical and physician collaboration to ensure effective clinical integration. A physician executive with a background in transplant surgery and process improvement, he works across disciplines to drive clinical excellence and improve outcomes while building the infrastructure to advance Baptist Health’s quality program. He has led the system’s transition to a more advanced quality operation through staff and organizational redesign, with a focus on promoting health equity through quality and safety standards. Baptist Health earned Leapfrog “A” safety grades in 2025 and received Press Ganey Human Experience awards and “Guardian of Excellence” recognition for employee experience the same year. The system was also named to Fortune‘s “Best Workplaces in Healthcare” in 2025.
Kencee Graves, MD. Chief Medical Quality Officer for University of Utah Health (Salt Lake City). Dr. Graves serves as chief medical quality officer for University of Utah Health. She works with teams to define, measure and improve the quality of care for our patients. She is also a clinical professor of internal medicine. She simultaneously practices clinically as a hospitalist and palliative medicine physician. Working with patients, she helps ensure they receive the care they need. Her clinical interests are medical education, patient safety, leadership, quality improvement and improving end-of-life care.
Angela Green, PhD, RN. Vice President of Patient Safety and Quality for Johns Hopkins Health System (Baltimore). Dr. Green provides executive oversight for patient safety, quality, performance improvement and patient experience across Johns Hopkins Medicine, collaborating with teams systemwide to eliminate preventable harm and achieve the highest standards of clinical excellence. One of her most significant accomplishments has been the comprehensive redesign of the Johns Hopkins Medicine event management system, including the design and implementation of a communication and resolution program and a redesigned cause analysis program that achieved more than a 60% reduction in root cause analysis turnaround time, which has been sustained for more than two years. She established governance structures to systematically disseminate learnings from each root cause analysis across the health system, enabling proactive risk mitigation and preventing recurrence of harm. Dr. Green also serves as co-lead of the Armstrong Institute Center for Harm Response and has chaired and contributed to multiple national workgroups for the Children’s Hospitals’ Solutions for Patient Safety Network. Johns Hopkins Medicine received the Mid-Atlantic Patient Safety Center “Minogue Award for Patient Safety Innovation” in 2026, and Johns Hopkins Hospital has been named to the U.S. News & World Report “Best Hospitals Honor Roll” for 14 consecutive years.
Kiran Gupta, MD. Vice President and Associate Chief Quality Officer at Sutter Health (Sacramento, Calif.). Dr. Gupta advances patient safety and quality across Sutter Health by operationalizing high-reliability principles at scale. She has led efforts to strengthen safety infrastructure and driven implementation of an enterprise safety reporting and analytics platform, enabling greater transparency, real-time insights and faster organizational learning. She supports systemwide engagement through daily safety huddles that connect leaders across sites and has helped expand a network of 1,800 reliability coaches to reinforce frontline safety practices. In addition, she has advanced safety education and competency work that promotes psychological safety, accountability and consistent daily practices. Her leadership is helping build a more connected, data-driven and proactive approach to delivering safe, high-quality care.
Donna Hahn, MSN, RN. Vice President of the Quality, Safety and Patient Experience Division at Geisinger (Danville, Pa.). Ms. Hahn sets the strategic vision for Geisinger’s quality, patient safety, risk, infection prevention and patient experience programs. She is accountable for the implementation and outcomes of these programs across the system and its network of outpatient clinics. Ms. Hahn leveraged an unconventional risk arrangement with a national vendor to optimize quality improvement, enhancing the typical hospital value-based purchasing program. Together, they created a mutually beneficial risk-share partnership that aligns incentives, reduces waste, ensures a cost-efficient relationship and improves patient outcomes. As part of the partnership development, Geisinger moved from a reactive model to continuous process improvement, leveraging vendor relationships through transparent communication aimed at improving patient outcomes. Unique partnerships, combined with a multidisciplinary approach to patient safety, have reduced hospital-acquired infections and central-line associated bloodstream infection rates, resulting in improvements in Leapfrog hospital safety grades and the system’s overall culture of safety.
Stephanie Hall, MD. Former Chief Medical Officer at Keck Hospital of USC and USC Norris Cancer Hospital (Los Angeles). Dr. Hall worked closely with physicians, interprofessional clinical staff and medical center leadership to drive initiatives in support of the organization’s strategic priorities. Since Dr. Hall started in her role in 2013, she oversaw effective, innovative safety improvements throughout the hospitals. The hospitals are primarily surgical hospitals providing tertiary care, treating the highest case mix index among academic medical centers. Her leadership led to achievements including earning Keck Hospital of USC its first-ever overall 5-star CMS quality rating and guiding Norris Cancer Hospital to be named Leapfrog “Top Teaching Hospital” multiple times. Dr. Hall also maintained her associate professorship of clinical emergency medicine in the USC department of emergency medicine. She also served as associate dean for clinical affairs for the Keck Medical Center. Dr. Hall retired in 2026.
Laura Haubner, MD. Senior Vice President and Chief Quality Officer at Tampa (Fla.) General Hospital. Dr. Haubner drives quality improvement and clinical safety at Tampa General, where she integrates evidence-based protocols, data-driven insights and interprofessional collaboration to enhance care outcomes. A long-time neonatologist, she continues to serve patients while shaping hospitalwide strategies for performance improvement, risk mitigation and patient-centered culture. Dr. Haubner has led initiatives to reduce medical errors, expand simulation-based training and align strategic planning with Tampa General’s mission to serve the broader Florida community. She holds leadership roles with the Vizient Chief Quality Officer Network and local healthcare advisory boards, where she supports regional quality transformation. Her work has helped Tampa General earn top rankings from U.S. News & World Report, Newsweek and other publications.
Nicole Hedderich, RN. Vice President of Quality and Risk Management at Calvert Health System (Prince Frederick, Md.). Ms. Hedderich oversees comprehensive performance improvement programs, ensuring patient safety, infection prevention and compliance with regulatory standards. Under her leadership, Calvert Health System improved its Leapfrog rating and recently achieved a 5-star rating from CMS. Ms. Hedderich was named “Employee of the Year” by the Healthcare Council for the National Capital Area in 2020 for her exceptional service. She also successfully implemented a daily leadership safety huddle, enhancing communication and safety protocols across the organization.
Patricia C. Henwood, MD. Executive Vice President, Chief Clinical Officer and James D. and Mary Jo Danella Chief Quality Officer at Jefferson (Philadelphia). Dr. Henwood is the foremost patient safety executive at Jefferson, one of the largest academic health systems in the country, where she leads the “OnPoint” quality and safety program. The program now spans 32 hospitals following a merger with Lehigh Valley Health in Allentown, Pa. The program embeds quality and safety at the unit level to achieve sustainable preventive harm reduction, and clinical improvements from the program contributed to an average annual decrease in sepsis mortality of 25%, saving nearly 700 lives and $30 million in costs. This work was recognized with the American Hospital Association “Quest for Quality Prize” in 2024. Dr. Henwood also oversees Jefferson’s “Great Catch” program, which encourages staff to report safety concerns before they affect patients. A practicing emergency physician and scholar published in more than 30 peer-reviewed journals, including The New England Journal of Medicine, she has led extensive international patient safety work through her nonprofit point-of-care ultrasound in resource-limited environments, developing clinical ultrasound training and research programs in Rwanda, Uganda, Liberia and Tanzania. She also volunteers with Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders telemedicine specialist team.
James M. Hoffman, PharmD. Senior Vice President of Quality and Safety at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital (Memphis, Tenn.). Dr. Hoffman has led patient safety strategy at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital since 2015, building a career at the institution that progressed from medication outcomes coordinator through chief patient safety officer to his current senior vice president role. A founding leader of the Clinical Pharmacogenomics Implementation Consortium since 2009, he has advanced pharmacogenomics as a patient safety strategy by developing scalable, vendor-agnostic implementation resources and co-leading the consortium’s informatics work group. Dr. Hoffman also holds national leadership roles with Solutions for Patient Safety, and co-led the organization’s initiative defining research priorities for pediatric patient safety, published in Pediatrics. His contributions to the field have been recognized with the American Pharmacists Association Foundation “Pinnacle Award for Career Achievement” and designation as a fellow of the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists.
Debra Honey, RN. Senior Vice President and CNO at Covenant Health (Knoxville, Tenn.). Ms. Honey holds leadership responsibility for quality, safety and nursing operations across Covenant Health’s nine-hospital system, the area’s largest employer with more than 13,000 employees across Tennessee. Under her leadership, all Covenant Health facilities have earned “Zero Harm Awards” from the Tennessee Hospital Association for two consecutive years, recognizing hospitals with zero rates of central line-associated bloodstream infection, catheter-associated urinary tract infection, Clostridium difficile infection and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus healthcare-associated infections in the prior calendar year. She has also driven Leapfrog “A” safety grades across the system, with all nine hospitals earning “A” grades in spring and fall 2024. Ms. Honey works with the system’s innovation program to advance a “Patient Safety Challenge” encouraging staff to develop improvement ideas, and implemented systemwide protocols that have significantly reduced healthcare-associated infection rates and improved the system’s overall patient safety indicator index. She is a fellow of the American Organization for Nursing Leadership and the American College of Healthcare Executives.
William Isenberg, MD, PhD. Vice President and Chief Medical and Quality Officer at Sutter Health (Sacramento, Calif.). Dr. Isenberg leads systemwide safety and quality strategy for Sutter Health, one of the nation’s largest nonprofit healthcare systems, advancing a high-reliability approach that embeds safety as foundational to care delivery. Under his leadership, Sutter Health has built a consistent safety culture supported by daily systemwide safety huddles that enable real-time alignment and rapid response across its network. His focus on standardization and accountability has strengthened the use of evidence-based practices across care settings and reinforced safety as a shared responsibility for all team members. These efforts have contributed to national recognition, with nine Sutter Health hospitals earning 2026 Healthgrades “Patient Safety Excellence Awards” and 15 hospitals receiving Leapfrog “A” hospital safety grades.
Venkat Iyer, MD. Chief Safety, Quality and Patient Experience Officer and Vice President of Medicine Specialties at Allina Health (Minneapolis). Dr. Iyer serves as the physician lead for enterprisewide safety, quality and patient experience across Allina Health’s 12-hospital integrated system. He also oversees more than 150 specialty physicians across 37 clinical sites. His quality leadership has contributed to a 75% reduction in preventable harm, a 26% decrease in the mortality index and a 39% reduction in catheter-associated urinary tract infections. He led the development and systemwide adoption of clinical standards following Cochrane “GRADE” methodology, achieving greater than $1 million in annual savings through optimized care delivery and reduced unnecessary utilization. Dr. Iyer orchestrated the implementation of system-level tier-4 safety huddles and leveraged advanced analytics to expand colorectal cancer screening outreach, impacting 5,180 additional patients. As vice president of medicine specialties, he increased specialty productivity by 12.5% year-over-year while adding 12,000 new patient visits, constituting a 15.9% growth rate, and reduced new consultation wait times by an average of 30 days through the optimization of advanced practice provider roles. He also serves as an assistant professor at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine.
Jennifer Jacobson, RN, BSN. Vice President of Clinical Operations and Quality at Compass Surgical Partners (Raleigh, N.C.). Ms. Jacobson is an accomplished patient safety expert who brings a wealth of clinical knowledge to the Compass Surgical Partners team. She leads the development and implementation of patient safety initiatives at ASCs, ensuring compliance with federal, state and accreditation guidelines. Her responsibilities include setting patient safety benchmarks based on national data and overseeing clinical quality and patient safety guidance for all stakeholders, including center administrators, physicians and health system leaders. She is a key member of the due diligence team for acquisitions, assessing ASCs and developing integration plans to uphold the organization’s high standards for patient-centered care. She also works closely with vendors to ensure their products and services reduce risks within the ASCs. Her professional accomplishments and day-to-day tasks, coupled with her ability to analyze data, communicate best practices and engage stakeholders in patient safety goals make her a key contributor to patient safety at Compass Surgical Partners.
Stephen Jones, MD. Executive Director of Patient Safety and Quality at Sibley Memorial Hospital and Johns Hopkins Health System (Baltimore). Dr. Jones provides executive leadership for patient safety, quality improvement and high reliability initiatives at Sibley Memorial Hospital, partnering with clinical, operational and executive leaders to reduce preventable harm and improve outcomes. Prior to joining Sibley, he served as medical director of safety and high reliability for Yale New Haven (Conn.) Health System, where he built enterprisewide safety infrastructure from the ground up across a newly unified health system. There, he stood up a systemwide safety committee, led efforts to standardize event management and root cause analysis, developed a three-tiered safety alert notification process, and designed a comprehensive just culture implementation program for more than 15,000 employees. His leadership contributed to more than an 80% reduction in serious safety events across Yale New Haven Health System. Dr. Jones received a “Special Achievement Award” from the Yale System Office of the Chief Medical Officer in recognition of his vision and exceptional leadership in integrating patient safety across the system. He is a recognized national speaker on patient safety, high reliability and just culture.
Che Jordan, PhD. COO of Guided Paths (Norfolk, Va.). Dr. Jordan serves as COO of Guided Paths, where he supports partnerships, builds upon community-based programs, and shapes systems that help those dealing with mental health struggles, substance use, homelessness and generational trauma. Prior, he led Phoenix-based Ebony House as CEO, focusing on substance use recovery and holistic mental health for underserved populations. While in that role, his innovative vision earned Ebony House and himself various awards, including the 2024 “Global Recognition Award” and the 2025 Nobel Business Award for “Outstanding Chief Executive Officer”. Dr. Jordan has also been featured by Business Insider, The Silicon Review and other publications for his contributions to behavioral healthcare.
Leslie Jurecko, MD. Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer at MCIC (New York City). Dr. Jurecko joined MCIC in 2024 as senior vice president and chief medical officer, bringing executive leadership experience in patient safety, quality and experience from two major health systems. She previously served as chief safety, quality and patient experience officer at Cleveland Clinic Health System, and before that as senior vice president for quality, safety and experience at Grand Rapids, Mich.-based Spectrum Health, a nonprofit integrated health system with 15 hospitals, multiple ambulatory sites and a health plan. Dr. Jurecko completed both the patient safety executive development program and the chief quality officer program at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, where she now serves as core faculty. Dr. Jurecko is a frequent speaker at national healthcare conferences on quality, safety and patient experience.
Nicole Justice. Vice President of Patient Safety, Risk and Insurance at Tampa (Fla.) General Hospital. Ms. Justice oversees all aspects of patient safety and compliance at Tampa General, aligning strategic safety initiatives across the organization and integrating private practice and academic providers. She ensures patient care adheres to all applicable health and hospital laws and regulations, fostering a lasting culture of safety. Ms. Justice played a crucial role in Tampa General’s qualification as a Collaborative Reliability Organization and increased safety event reporting by over 25% within two years. She collaborates with Tampa General’s USF academic partner, the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine, to enhance resident physician engagement in safety programs.
Allen Kachalia, MD. Senior Vice President of Patient Safety and Quality and Director of the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality at Johns Hopkins Medicine (Baltimore). Dr. Kachalia leads systemwide quality and patient safety strategy for Johns Hopkins Medicine and directs the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality, one of the nation’s premier centers for safety research and practice improvement. A practicing hospitalist, he was the first author of a groundbreaking 2010 study demonstrating that transparent responses to patients after errors, including proactive offers of financial resolution, produced liability savings rather than increased costs, a finding that jump-started a national movement to adopt communication and resolution programs and led to the development of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality “CANDOR” toolkit. He played a key role in subsequent studies of communication and resolution program implementation in Massachusetts, and was senior author of a 2024 article in The New England Journal of Medicine titled “Responding to medical errors: Implementing the modern ethical paradigm.” Dr. Kachalia’s organizationwide initiatives have supported Johns Hopkins Hospital’s placement on the U.S. News & World Report “Best Hospitals Honor Roll” and Magnet redesignation across multiple Johns Hopkins system hospitals.
Sarah Kadish. Vice President of Quality and Patient Safety at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (Boston). Ms. Kadish has led quality and patient safety strategy at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute since July 2018, bringing more than 20 years of experience applying data, systems engineering and operations to drive innovation across complex academic medical centers. Her work focuses on translating enterprise strategy into measurable improvements in performance, patient experience and clinical outcomes, with particular emphasis on equity and quality as complementary rather than competing priorities. Key areas of expertise include enterprise transformation, advanced analytics, operational design, EHR and systems implementation, AI adoption and leading multidisciplinary teams through sustained change. Ms. Kadish is known for her ability to partner with boards, executives and frontline clinicians to build durable improvement systems rather than short-term initiatives. She is also recognized for her focus on building strong teams and embedding change across organizations so that improvements persist over time.
Eileen Kasda, DrPH. President and CEO at SafeTower (Baltimore). Dr. Kasda took on the president and CEO role at SafeTower in June 2025. Prior, she was the organization’s vice president of patient safety for two years, leading strategic development and innovation in patient safety technology. She designed “Hero”, an AI-powered safety event reporting platform transforming how health systems gather, analyze and act on safety data. She also developed “Harmony”, a pioneering tool that incorporates patient complaints into safety analytics, placing patient voices at the center of safety efforts. Dr. Kasda’s work significantly increased physician engagement, transparency and proactive safety decision-making within client health systems. As founder of the Healthcare Event Reporting Collaborative, she fosters nationwide collaboration to advance analytics and safety innovation. Dr. Kasda is a recognized national speaker and Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins faculty member, and her groundbreaking work has earned awards from ECRI and the Maryland Patient Safety Center.
Brian Kates. Director of Risk Management and Quality at Cumberland Hospital (New Kent, Va.). Mr. Kates oversees patient safety, risk management, regulatory compliance and quality improvement at Cumberland Hospital, a behavioral health facility within King of Prussia, Pa.-based Universal Health Services. Drawing on prior executive experience as both a COO and CEO, he brings an enterprise-level perspective to day-to-day risk management, designing safety processes that are sustainable and operationally grounded rather than theoretical. His responsibilities include reviewing and investigating adverse events, leading root cause analyses, coordinating regulatory reporting and guiding corrective action planning, with a particular focus on high-acuity behavioral health environments where risk is complex and decisions must be made quickly. He has led patient safety initiatives that improved event reporting practices, reduced preventable events and strengthened staff confidence in safety systems, and is recognized for transparent communication and accountability during investigations and regulatory reviews.
Kelly Ragan Kelleher, MD. Chief Quality and Patient Safety Officer and Associate Chief Medical Officer at Phoenix Children’s (Phoenix). Dr. Kelleher leads the quality and safety team at Phoenix Children’s, one of the top-ranked pediatric health systems in the West, overseeing efforts to ensure safe, high-quality care through clinical innovation, standardization and a culture of continuous improvement. Her team’s close collaboration with IT has produced tools with measurable patient safety impact. For instance, the “WATCHER” surveillance program, which uses a predictive algorithm to flag hospitalized children at risk for deterioration, has identified more than 400 children in need of a higher level of care and contributed to a 200% decrease in preventable code events in acute care units. An AI-driven malnutrition identification algorithm flags pediatric patients at high risk, with 60% to 80% of those identified subsequently diagnosed with malnutrition and placed on treatment plans. Dr. Kelleher also introduced an inpatient eating disorders team that decreased the length of hospital stays for patients with eating disorders by 47%, and helped launch the clinical nurse attending role, described as the first of its kind in the nation. Phoenix Children’s achieved its lowest serious safety event rate ever under her leadership and has maintained zero preventable code events outside the ICU for more than 36 months.
Kate Kellogg, MD. Vice President of Patient Safety and Infection Prevention for MedStar Health (Columbia, Md.). Dr. Kellogg serves as vice president of patient safety and infection prevention at MedStar Health. Under her leadership, the system implemented its high reliability organization “2.0” initiative systemwide, while safety reporting increased more than fourfold, a key marker of an improved safety culture. She also led the infection prevention response during the Covid-19 pandemic, coordinating policy, contact tracing, supply chain and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reporting with exceptional effectiveness. A national thought leader, Dr. Kellogg’s research has influenced tools such as Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s “CANDOR” toolkit, and she has been awarded over $4.7 million in safety science grants. Her work has been featured by The Leapfrog Group as a model of ethical harm event response and earned the “Robert Wears Safety Award” for 2023.
Sandra Kemmerly, MD. System Medical Director of Patient Safety at Ochsner Health (New Orleans). In addition to her administrative role as system medical director of patient safety at Ochsner Health, Dr. Kemmerly actively serves as an infectious disease physician at Ochsner Medical Center New Orleans and as physician chair of the system antimicrobial stewardship subcommittee. She is board certified in internal medicine and infectious diseases, and is a fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. She has been part of Ochsner Health since 1988 and has held leadership roles such as president of the medical staff executive committee at Ochsner Medical Center. Dr. Kemmerly played a crucial role in Ochsner Health’s Covid-19 pandemic response and has led various multidisciplinary quality and safety initiatives. In 2022, she co-authored a book on optimizing hospital safety and quality grades. Thanks to her many contributions to the field, she received the American College of Physicians “Louisiana Chapter Laureate Award” in 2011.
Heather Khan, RN. Vice President of Quality Transformation at Endeavor Health (Evanston, Ill.). Ms. Khan handles acute care quality, clinical risk management, patient safety, infection prevention, and clinical regulatory and accreditation standards at Endeavor Health. In addition, she oversees quality performance across the system’s ambulatory and population health activities. She developed and implemented a comprehensive quality strategy that crosses all care settings, and works closely with the medical group and Endeavor Health Physician Partner leadership to help meet population health clinical and financial expectations. She took on her current role in February 2026 after serving as the organization’s system vice president of acute care quality since October 2024.
Kimi Kobayashi, MD. Chief Medical Officer at UMass Memorial Medical Center and Medical Group (Worcester, Mass.). As chief medical officer, Dr. Kobayashi oversees capacity management and throughput, focusing on length of stay, patient flow and systemwide coordination. He is collaborating with the system COO, as well as CMOs and CNOs across the health system, to build a system command center that will optimize patient movement, asset utilization and access to care. Dr. Kobayashi also serves as dyad partner to the CNO, jointly addressing complex clinical, operational and communication challenges, including difficult patient scenarios, complex discharges and interdisciplinary issues on inpatient units. His executive oversight spans hospital medicine, the eICU program, employee health services, palliative care, and ultimate accountability for quality and safety performance. Outcomes improved under his leadership, with the medical center seeing top-quartile performance among Vizient organizations on the PSI-90 patient safety indicator bundle, alongside a cultural shift toward clearer accountability for disruptive behavior. Drawing on prior roles at Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins’ Capacity Command Center and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, he is also positioned as a national voice in capacity management through advisory work with an American Hospital Association-sponsored consortium and as chair of Vizient’s chief medical executive advisory committee.
Lauren Koniaris, MD. Vice President and CMIO at Hackensack Meridian Health (Edison, N.J.). Dr. Koniaris leads clinical informatics strategy across the largest healthcare network in New Jersey, overseeing a team of 26, including 11 clinical informaticists. She also serves as interim head of Hackensack Meridian Health’s data and analytics department, which oversees real-time dashboards, reporting tools, data catalogs and the safe, effective and ethical development and deployment of advanced AI and predictive analytics. She led the “Epic Refuel” project that implemented more than 600 features across the health network, an initiative already producing successful metrics demonstrated by Epic gold stars. Dr. Koniaris also chairs the AI advisory committee and oversees AI governance to ensure the safe and effective deployment of AI tools, including ambient documentation and predictive analytics. She previously led the “Thrive at the Bedside” initiative, which streamlined EHR workflows and enhanced efficiency for physicians and nurses across the system. Board certified in clinical informatics, pulmonary medicine and critical care medicine, Dr. Koniaris also serves as an assistant professor of medicine at the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine, where she co-directs the Phase I “Infection, Immunity and Cancer” course. Hackensack University Medical Center ranked No. 1 in New Jersey and No. 1 in the New York Metro Area in the 2025 U.S. News & World Report rankings, and Hackensack Meridian Health was recognized by the Lown Institute as the top nonprofit health system in the nation for giving back to the communities it serves.
Sunita Koshy-Nesbitt, MD. Chief Quality Officer for the Hospital Channel at Texas Health Resources and Chief Medical and Quality Officer of Texas Health Physicians Group (Arlington, Texas). Dr. Koshy-Nesbitt holds a dual role overseeing quality outcomes across Texas Health Resources, the largest nonprofit health system in North Texas, which serves more than 1.7 million patients annually across 29 hospital locations and more than 420 access points. She leads continual regulatory readiness for 14 wholly owned and five joint venture hospitals, directs enterprise infection prevention strategy, and oversees clinical quality improvement for the system’s physician organization of 6,800 employed and affiliated physicians. Under her leadership, system-level teams have driven mortality outcomes to top national quartile-to-decile rankings for three consecutive years, including acute myocardial infarction, congestive heart failure, pneumonia and sepsis mortality. She introduced real-time data tools and multidisciplinary service line committees that create a forum for sharing best practices and aligning goals across the system. Texas Health Resources ranked first on Fortune‘s “Best Places to Work in Healthcare” in both 2024 and 2025, and the system has received the Press Ganey “Zero Harm Award” for Texas Health Physicians Group in 2026.
Mallory Koshiol. Vice President of System Safety and Quality at Allina Health (Minneapolis). Ms. Koshiol leads enterprisewide safety, quality and experience teams across Allina Health’s full continuum of care, overseeing quality improvement, patient safety, infection prevention, accreditation, health equity, occupational health, and trauma and stroke program services. Under her leadership over a five-year period from 2019 to 2025, Allina Health achieved a 75% reduction in hospital serious preventable patient harm alongside dramatic improvements in safety culture surveys, with gains in 11 of 13 domains. Her team also delivered a greater than 60% decrease in the inpatient mortality index, a 47% reduction in catheter-associated urinary tract infections and a 67% reduction in hysterectomy surgical site infections. She designed the system’s high-reliability infrastructure, including standardized event reporting, daily tiered safety huddles, leadership development curriculum and recognition programs. Additionally, she launched a virtual patient and family advisory platform engaging 57,000 members. Ms. Koshiol co-authored two articles on high reliability and safety culture transformation, which were published in the American Journal of Medical Quality in 2026.
M. Suzanne Kraemer, MD. Chief Quality Officer at Carilion Clinic (Roanoke, Va.). Dr. Kraemer leads Carilion Clinic’s systemwide clinical advancement and patient safety efforts, combining operational excellence with frontline engagement to drive measurable quality outcomes. Under her leadership, Carilion Clinic launched a mortality review program that reduced system mortality rates by over 50% in under two years and dramatically cut healthcare-associated infections through real-time escalation huddles. She also implemented “Target Zero Harm”, a digital platform recognizing employee contributions to patient safety, and established physician-appointed quality directors in most departments. Dr. Kraemer brings over nearly three decades of experience, including prior roles as chief of staff and residency director, with a demonstrated ability to mobilize clinicians and drive accountability. Her work has earned Carilion Clinic regional and national accolades, including consistent Leapfrog “A” grades. Dr. Kraemer is also a clinical professor at Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine.
Alice M. Krumm, DNP, RN. Director of Partner Engagement and Faculty for Vanderbilt Health (Nashville, Tenn.). Dr. Krumm is a nationally recognized healthcare leader with over 30 years of experience advancing patient safety, professional accountability and perioperative excellence. As a faculty member at Vanderbilt University School of Nursing and Vanderbilt Health’s Center for Patient and Professional Advocacy, Dr. Krumm helps organizations implement evidence-based strategies to build high-performing teams and foster a culture of safety, support and respect. She has played a pivotal role in systemwide safety initiatives, including the development of a comprehensive safety program at Columbus-based The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and the implementation of perioperative safety huddles across Vanderbilt’s adult hospitals. Her work on peer feedback models, including the “coworker observation reporting system” for nursing programs, has informed national guidelines and been featured in Association of periOperative Registered Nurses’ revised standards for team communication. A member of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education’s clinical learning environment review operative and procedural sub-protocol advisory group, Dr. Krumm shapes national conversations around safety, professionalism and team-based care.
Jared Kutzin. Immediate Past President of the Society for Simulation in Healthcare (Washington, D.C.) and Senior Director of the Simulation Teaching and Research Center, and Professor of Emergency Medicine and Medical Education at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (New York City). Dr. Kutzin advances the mission of the Society for Simulation in Healthcare to improve high-quality care and patient safety through simulation-based education and systems integration, while also leading simulation programs at Mount Sinai Hospital and Mount Sinai Health System with a focus on resuscitation response outcomes. He has worked to improve resuscitation outcomes, adherence to evidence-based guidelines for central line placement and sepsis bundle compliance through simulation-based training across disciplines including physicians, nurses, respiratory therapists and physical therapists. Dr. Kutzin has pioneered the use of escape rooms in health professions education as a patient safety training tool, an innovation that has been replicated by other organizations to improve safety culture and clinical performance. His global outreach includes bringing simulation education and system enhancement programs to communities in India, Nepal, Africa and the Caribbean. He currently serves on the New York State Board of Nursing and the New York State Emergency Medical Services Council. Previously, Dr. Kutzin was on the “Malcolm Baldrige Award” board of examiners and the editorial boards of MedEdPORTAL and the Journal of Emergency Nursing.
Hakim Lakhani. Senior Director of Health Systems Transformation for Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (Boston). Mr. Lakhani joined Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in 2016 to establish its health systems improvement program, aiming to advance patient safety, quality and efficiency. In 2024, Mr. Lakhani assumed the role of senior director of health systems transformation, leading efforts to redesign and improve care delivery using systems engineering, system safety, human factors, computer simulation modeling and continuous process improvement. He also oversees the patient-reported data program, which helps capture the patient voice to inform care and enhance outcomes. Mr. Lakhani is an active member of Dana-Farber’s quality and patient safety leadership team, and he recently led a series of innovative clinical scenario simulations in mocked-up patient rooms, informing the design of Dana-Farber’s proposed future cancer hospital. The simulations were instrumental in identifying critical design enhancements to improve patient and staff safety, workflow efficiency and the overall healing environment.
Christopher Landrigan, MD, MPH. Chief of General Pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital, Director of the Sleep and Patient Safety Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, William Berenberg Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School (Boston). Dr. Landrigan is a nationally recognized patient safety researcher whose work has shaped both clinical practice and national policy governing how academic medical centers are organized and how physicians are trained. His research on the relationship between resident work hours, sleep deprivation and patient safety contributed directly to national changes in resident work hour standards. He led the development of “I-PASS,” a multifaceted handoff and communication improvement program that has been widely adopted across hospitals to reduce errors during care transitions. A founding member of the “Harvard Work Hours, Health, and Safety Group,” Dr. Landrigan also served as founding chair of the Pediatric Research in Inpatient Settings Network, a collaboration of more than 100 pediatric hospitals that conducts multicenter research and improvement projects. His broader body of work spans the epidemiology of medical errors, reliable patient safety measurement tools and the design of interventions to reduce harm in inpatient settings. Dr. Landrigan has authored more than 150 peer-reviewed publications and has received numerous awards for his research, teaching, leadership and innovation.
Kelo Landry, BSN. Director of the Quality, Patient Safety and Stroke Program at Lakeview Hospital (Covington, La.). Ms. Landry has held this director role since 2010 and has been employed at Lakeview Hospital for more than 30 years, serving in leadership positions across infection control, medical-surgical and step-down units and risk management. Under her direction, Lakeview Hospital earned its first primary stroke center certification in 2014 and achieved level 3 trauma center designation in 2017, milestones that significantly expanded the care the community hospital could offer patients. She leads quality and patient safety efforts, manages physician quality reporting for credentialing, oversees regulatory readiness, guides performance improvement across all departments and manages the hospital’s risk program. Ms. Landry is a Team STEPPS master trainer and has expertise in infection control and epidemiology, professional inpatient safety, healthcare quality and just culture. In 2025, she was honored with the “Healthcare Heroes Award” from New Orleans CityBusiness for her contributions to patient safety and quality care.
Michael Lane, MD. Senior Vice President, Chief Quality and Safety Officer and Associate Chief Medical Officer at Parkland Health (Dallas). Dr. Lane leads all quality and safety efforts at Parkland Health, the sole public hospital in Dallas County, which handles more than 73,000 discharges, nearly 1.3 million outpatient visits, more than 228,000 emergency visits and approximately 13,000 deliveries annually. Under his leadership, the system has advanced toward becoming a high reliability organization through widespread adoption of just culture principles and high-reliability frameworks, producing a significant reduction in serious safety events alongside increased safety event reporting. His data-driven initiatives have also produced a greater than 50% reduction in central line-associated bloodstream infection standardized infection ratio and contributed to stronger CMS star ratings. Dr. Lane recently served as chair of the Texas Hospital Association’s safety and quality committee, co-chairs the super safety-net hospital cohort at Vizient to share safety practices among similar institutions, and serves on the Partnership for Quality Measurement’s pre-rulemaking measure review recommendations committee.
Diego Lara, MD. Chief Quality and Safety Officer at Ochsner Children’s (New Orleans). Dr. Lara leads all quality and safety initiatives at Ochsner Children’s Hospital, fostering a culture of improvement through multidisciplinary engagement and systems-based change. He directs daily safety huddles, chairs the quality committee, and ensures the alignment of clinical practices across specialties and the expanding Gulf South network. Dr. Lara launched a hospitalwide safety culture training program that proved so impactful it was subsequently adopted by adult care teams at Ochsner as well. He also co-directs the fetal diagnosis and care program, bringing specialized expertise in pediatric cardiology and fetal care to his leadership role. Ochsner Children’s has been recognized by U.S. News & World Report as the No. 1 hospital for children in Louisiana for five consecutive years and has ranked among the top 50 children’s hospitals in the country for nine consecutive years.
Kelly LeBlanc. Senior Director of Patient Safety and Quality at Touro (New Orleans). Ms. LeBlanc brings more than 20 years of experience in healthcare quality, patient safety and risk management to her role at Touro, where she has led clinical quality, patient safety and regulatory compliance initiatives for the past three years. Under her leadership, Touro has achieved and maintained an “A” Leapfrog hospital safety grade, improved its CMS star rating, and advanced multiple nationally recognized quality and safety designations. Prior to joining Touro, she served in New Orleans as director of patient safety and risk management at Tulane Medical Center and as assistant vice president of performance improvement and infection prevention at Ochsner Medical Center. Ms. LeBlanc is a member of both the National Association of Healthcare Quality and the Louisiana Association for Healthcare Quality.
Brent Lee, MD. Director of Clinical Excellence and Performance Improvement at North American Partners in Anesthesia (Sunrise, Fla.). Dr. Lee has steered all patient safety and quality initiatives at North American Partners in Anesthesia for eight years, overseeing a national organization of nearly 5,000 clinicians across more than 400 facilities and serving more than two million patients annually. He architected the organization’s adverse event reporting software and the anesthesia risk alert program, a framework that identifies five high-risk clinical scenarios and sets structured triggers and protocols for each. This framework earned the “John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety and Quality Award” for national level innovation from The Joint Commission and the National Quality Forum in 2022, and the “Patient Safety Award” from the American Society for Health Care Risk Management in 2023. Dr. Lee also developed a specialty-specific quality and patient safety dashboard that benchmarks anesthesia services across facilities on 10 parameters, and leads the organization’s “Care for the Caregiver” program, which provides structured, trauma-informed support to anesthesia professionals after critical events. He serves as medical director of the NAPA Anesthesia Patient Safety Institute, one of only five anesthesia-specific patient safety organizations certified by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Dr. Lee also serves on national and international committees focused on safe patient care during crises.
Donald J. Lefkowits, MD. Executive Medical Director at Sentact (Nashville, Tenn.). Dr. Lefkowits leads peer review at Sentact with a strong focus on patient safety and clinician education. He aims to empower providers through communication and teamwork training, and has spearheaded safety initiatives that improved patient flow and outcomes. He brings more than 40 years of medical leadership experience to his role, including decades in emergency medicine at Denver-based Rose Medical Center, where he directed trauma protocols and throughput strategies. He has chaired credentialing and peer review committees and is a former president of the Colorado Medical Board, where he influenced state-level safety policy. He was honored as a top emergency physician by 5280 Magazine in 2008.
Elsie Lindgren. Enterprise Patient Safety Officer and Associate Vice President of Patient Safety and High Reliability at Advocate Health (Charlotte, N.C.). Ms. Lindgren provides enterprise leadership for patient safety strategy at Advocate Health, the nation’s third largest nonprofit health system, advancing a culture of safety and high reliability across acute, ambulatory and post-acute settings at more than 1,100 sites of care. She led the integration of five disparate patient safety event reporting platforms into a single enterprise learning system and standardized daily safety huddles systemwide, reinforcing early risk identification and shared accountability. Under her leadership, Advocate Health built a network of more than 3,000 safety champions across the enterprise and achieved year-over-year improvement in its annual culture of safety survey, with a completion rate exceeding 75%, representing more than 125,000 teammates. Advocate Health now outperforms the top quartile across every safety culture domain. In 2025, 24 Advocate Health hospitals earned Leapfrog “A” safety grades, placing the system among the top five nationally by number of “A” ratings.
Amy Lu, MD. Chief Quality Officer at UCSF Health (San Francisco). Dr. Lu leads quality improvement, patient safety, risk, regulatory compliance, health equity, clinical documentation integrity, quality analytics, hospital epidemiology and infection prevention at UCSF Health, and also serves as the organization’s designated patient safety officer. Since taking the role in 2021, she has developed new quality and safety governance structures, initiated the organization’s first enterprisewide culture of safety survey and redesigned the patient safety event reporting management process. Dr. Lu has shifted UCSF Health’s clinical analytics program from reactive to proactive data visualization, and advanced clinical pathway and care redesign initiatives that have improved clinical outcomes, patient experience and provider experience while reducing costs. Under her leadership, UCSF Health has earned a Leapfrog “A” grade and “Top Teaching Hospital” award for three consecutive years, appeared on the U.S. News & World Report honor roll for four consecutive years and achieved a Vizient top-10 ranking for four consecutive years. The organization also achieved a CMS 5-star rating for the first time in its history in 2023, sustaining it in 2024 and 2025.
Josh Lumbley, MD. Chief Quality Officer at NorthStar Anesthesia (Irving, Texas and Washington D.C.). As national chief quality officer, Dr. Lumbley is responsible for ensuring that NorthStar Anesthesia delivers best-in-class quality outcomes for its patients, nationwide. Under Dr. Lumbley’s leadership, 97% of NorthStar’s clinical sites received an “Exceptional Performance Payment Adjustment” score under the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in 2023. He combines a passion for lifelong learning, data-driven decision making and strategic leadership to improve clinical performance and elevate physician wellness at NorthStar.
Allison Luu, MD. Patient Safety Officer and Assistant Chief Quality Officer at Los Angeles General Medical Center. Dr. Luu oversees institutional safety and quality initiatives spanning clinical departments and multidisciplinary teams at Los Angeles General Medical Center, one of the nation’s largest safety-net hospitals. She directs the quality academy program, the quality, risk and safety committee, TeamSTEPPS training and the management of publicly reported quality metrics, and leads the health system leader fellowship and healthcare administration scholars program to develop emerging physician leaders in quality improvement and systems thinking. Under her leadership, the hospital achieved three consecutive Leapfrog “A” safety grades, along with a 65% reduction in central line-associated bloodstream infections and a 56% reduction in catheter-associated urinary tract infections over a multi-year period. Dr. Luu accomplished this in a resource-constrained environment serving a high-risk, diverse patient population. She also serves as an assistant professor and quality and safety senior seminar director at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California.
Tim McDonald, MD, JD. Chief Patient Safety and Risk Officer at RLDatix (Chicago). Dr. McDonald brings more than three decades of experience in clinical care, law and patient safety to his role as chief patient safety and risk officer at RLDatix, where he leads solutions that integrate technology and culture change for harm prevention. An anesthesiologist and licensed attorney, Dr. McDonald is widely recognized for his work in transparency, disclosure and the “CANDOR” toolkit. His advocacy for compassionate honesty helps hospitals implement culturally responsive pedagogy frameworks that reduce safety events and improve staff wellbeing. He has also advanced RLDatix’s software to support peer support programs, improve emotional resilience and track safety culture. Dr. McDonald is a national thought leader and TEDx speaker who has received awards including the Medically Induced Trauma Support Services “Hope Award” and the American College of Medical Quality “Founders’ Award”. He also teaches at Loyola University and advises leading malpractice insurers and health systems.
Patricia McGaffigan. Senior Advisor of Safety and President of the Certification Board for Professionals in Patient Safety at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (Boston). Ms. McGaffigan serves as a national leader in advancing systemic safety initiatives and workforce wellbeing. As co-chair of the national steering committee for patient safety, she played a key role in shaping the CMS patient safety structural measure and aligning it with the National Action Plan. She launched the certified professional in human factors in healthcare program in 2025. She also led the organization’s Lucian Leape Institute report on AI and patient safety, which has had wide national reach. Her board service and advisory roles span American Nurses Credentialing Center, American Nurses Association, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and Planetree.
Shelly McGonigal, DNP, RN. Network Director of Quality and Patient Safety at Allegheny Health Network (Pittsburgh). Dr. McGonigal drives strategic patient safety initiatives at both the system and hospital levels across Allegheny Health Network, with a focus on achieving zero harm and ensuring 100% evidence-based care delivery. She led the successful systemwide implementation of just culture across the network’s 10 hospitals, which significantly improved incident reporting and transparency, and oversaw the implementation of the “Condition Help” patient advocacy program and the establishment of a diagnostic excellence committee. Her externally recognized work includes an Association of periOperative Registered Nurses podium presentation and PSA webinar on a network quality improvement journey in operating room specimen handling, a Vizient webinar on optimizing event reporting to impact mortality and length of stay, and a peer-reviewed publication in Patient Safety. Dr. McGonigal collaborated with the Certification Board for Professionals in Patient Safety in developing the certified professional in age-friendly healthcare credential, contributing to the development of the examination as a subject matter expert. Five Allegheny Health Network hospitals have earned Leapfrog “A” safety grades under her leadership.
Sarah Matt, MD. Founder and Principal at Vital Werks (Fayetteville, N.Y.). Dr. Matt is a board-eligible surgeon and healthcare strategy consultant whose work sits at the intersection of clinical safety and technology implementation, advising health systems and digital health companies on AI governance, clinical validation and safe technology deployment. She brings 20 years of enterprise health IT leadership and active clinical practice to her advisory work, which includes AI contract governance, implementation risk assessment and building clinical validation frameworks for digital health products. Prior, at Oracle Health, she led go-to-market strategy for a $28 billion portfolio with direct focus on clinical workflow safety. At ESO, she oversaw product management for public safety and emergency medical services technology where patient handoff data integrity is a direct safety variable, growing the platform from $60 million to $95 million in annual recurring revenue. Dr. Matt also serves as assistant clinical professor at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, N.Y. and as a volunteer physician serving uninsured patients at the Mary Rose Clinic in Oneida, N.Y. Her book The Borderless Healthcare Revolution addresses the implementation and governance conditions under which health technology improves outcomes rather than introducing new risk.
Jordan Messler, MD. Chief Medical Officer at Glytec (Boston). Dr. Messler is responsible for spearheading continuous improvement initiatives for Glytec’s clinical strategy and product development while supporting the delivery, customer, quality and regulatory teams to ensure ethical and safe glycemic management best practices. He has given many national and regional talks on the history of hospitals, teamwork in the hospital, engaging hospitalists in quality improvement and more.
Satyanarayana Reddy Mukkera, MD. Assistant Vice President of Orlando (Fla.) Health and Chief Medical Officer at Orlando Health Orlando Regional Medical Center. Dr. Mukkera leads safety and quality initiatives for Orlando Health’s flagship hospital, including its level 1 trauma center, with a focus on reducing mortality and hospital-acquired complications. Previously chief quality officer across several Orlando Health facilities, he brings deep clinical and operational experience to this role. Under his leadership, additional lives were saved, and hospital-acquired infections like central line bloodstream infections and catheter-associated urinary tract infections were reduced. Dr. Mukkera also holds academic appointments and is board certified in internal medicine, critical care medicine and neurocritical care.
Brenda Nance, DNP, RN. Vice President of Quality Attainment at Saint Francis Health System (Tulsa, Okla.). Dr. Nance is in charge of all quality initiatives for Saint Francis Health System, where she is responsible for patient safety and accreditation, safety event analysis, infection control and prevention, patient experience, clinical quality data and physician peer review. She is also passionate about health equity, helping Saint Francis become one of the first hospitals nationally to join a health and human services initiative to reduce perinatal mortality. The system is an early adopter of “Team Birth” and four years after starting the program, Saint Francis was recognized for its improved Black maternal health and low C-section rates. During Dr. Nance’s tenure, Saint Francis Hospital has increased its safety grades from The Leapfrog Group.
Bela Nand, MD. Regional CMO at AdventHealth Mid-America Region (Kan.). Dr. Nand was appointed regional CMO for the Mid-America Region of AdventHealth in the summer of 2025, where she now serves as the primary CMO for AdventHealth Shawnee Mission and also supports AdventHealth Ottawa and other regional initiatives. In this role, she leads efforts in clinical quality, patient safety and physician engagement across multiple hospitals, building on her previous success as CMO at UChicago Medicine AdventHealth Hinsdale and La Grange. Known for her collaborative leadership, Dr. Nand has launched impactful programs such as just objective peer review, enhanced safety event reporting systems and dyad clinical leadership models, which have contributed to CMS 4- and 5-star ratings, Leapfrog “A” grades and Magnet designations. Under her guidance, key outcomes such as length of stay, sepsis mortality and operating room first-case starts have significantly improved. Dr. Nand is board certified in internal medicine and hospice/palliative medicine.
David Nash, MD. Founding Dean Emeritus of the Jefferson College of Population Health (Philadelphia). Dr. Nash is internationally recognized for his efforts in physician leadership development, care quality improvement and public accountability for outcomes. An internist by training, he is a principal faculty member for quality-of-care programming with the American Association for Physician Leadership. Dr. Nash has also authored over 100 peer-reviewed articles, edited 25 books and is currently the editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Medical Quality and Population Health Management.
Benjamin Njoku, RN. Assistant Executive Director of Nursing, Perioperative Services at NYC Health and Hospitals/Lincoln (New York). Mr. Njoku provides clinical, administrative and informatics leadership across perioperative service lines at NYC Health and Hospitals/Lincoln, including the operating room, surgical intensive care unit, post-anesthesia care unit, endoscopy, same-day surgery, urology, obstetric surgery and central sterile processing. In 2025, the high-risk service lines under his oversight achieved zero catheter-associated urinary tract infections, near-zero central line-associated bloodstream infections and more than a 60% reduction in hospital-acquired pressure injuries. He increased specialty certification rates to 40% in the surgical intensive care unit and 80% in the post-anesthesia care unit, and boosted clinical ladder participation across shifts through mentorship and professional development strategies. Mr. Njoku serves as co-founding trustee of the New York Relief Network, president-elect of NYC Men in Nursing, and secretary and treasurer of the Society of Critical Care Medicine nursing section. He received the “DAISY Health Equity Award” from the American Association of Men in Nursing in 2025 and was recognized among notable leaders in philanthropy by Crain’s New York Business in 2025.
Lori Paine, DrPH. Vice President and Patient Safety Officer at Rochester (N.Y.) Regional Health. In her current role, Dr. Paine oversees strategic and tactical patient safety initiatives. Known for her leadership and public speaking, she has inspired patient safety professionals worldwide and consulted on topics such as strategic planning, human factors, and safety culture improvement. Dr. Paine also teaches at the Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. She has published scholarly articles, contributed to healthcare policy, and serves on expert panels for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the National Quality Forum. Her doctoral work advanced patient safety by triangulating safety culture, employee engagement, and patient satisfaction data to identify high-risk areas. Previously, Dr. Paine served as the senior director of patient safety at Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality, contributing over 30 years to the institution.
Arun Patel. Chief Patient Safety and Clinical Risk Officer for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services. Dr. Patel is the chief patient safety and clinical risk officer for Los Angeles County Department of Health Services. Under his leadership, Los Angeles General Medical Center moved from a Leapfrog “D” rating to a sustained “A,” a turnaround achieved in under two years. Across the system, he implemented just culture and “CANDOR” programs, shifting a decades-old punitive environment into one that encourages transparency and frontline empowerment. This cultural shift has led to a drop in malpractice claims and costs, and widespread improvements in error reporting and response. Dr. Patel personally leads systemwide training and oversees the response process for just culture interpretations, embedding accountability and fairness into organizational DNA.
Laura Paxton. Founder and CEO at Rpharmy (Austin, Texas). Ms. Paxton is the founder and CEO of Rpharmy, a healthcare technology company advancing medication safety through innovative software as a service solutions. After experiencing a personal loss due to a preventable medication error, she designed “Formweb”, a cloud-based formulary and communication hub, which streamlines critical safety data for pharmacists, nurses and clinicians. Under Ms. Paxton’s leadership, Formweb has integrated with major EHRs and helped healthcare systems reduce medication errors and identify cost-saving opportunities. She has pioneered features addressing key safety and financial challenges, including alerts for drug recalls, shortages and high-cost medications. Ms. Paxton also launched Rpharmy’s safety first blog and other educational initiatives, establishing herself as a thought leader in the field. Her work has earned national recognition, including a 2024 Premier “Innovators Award” and multiple “Stevie Awards” for her contributions to patient safety and leadership.
Kathleen Pendleton. System Director of Just Culture and Patient Safety Projects at Wellstar Health System (Atlanta). Ms. Pendleton serves as the enterprise leader for just culture and patient safety initiatives at Wellstar Health System, overseeing systemwide implementation of safety strategies, event investigation processes and high reliability principles. She led the implementation of a comprehensive just culture framework across the integrated health system, developing more than 300 internal just culture champions and establishing multiple communities of learning to sustain engagement and embed principles into organizational culture. Ms. Pendleton co-created and hosts an annual patient safety summit that fosters collaboration and shared learning across the system, and has developed more than 50 patient safety communications to standardize best practices. Earlier in her career, she demonstrated measurable results including reducing visitor fall incidents and claims by up to 50% through proactive risk strategies and workflow redesign. She contributes as a national presenter and webinar faculty member for the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists and The Just Culture Company.
Jonathan Perlin, MD, PhD. President and CEO of The Joint Commission (Oakbrook Terrace, Ill.). In 2022, Dr. Perlin became the president and CEO of The Joint Commission. Since his appointment, he has led the organization in its mission of improving the safety and quality of care offered to patients. Dr. Perlin has been recognized with the “John Eisenberg Award for Patient Safety” for using AI to detect sepsis early and save 8,000 lives. He has also been published for preventing hospital acquired infections, reducing pre-term deliveries, and using health informatics for improving safety and quality.
Becky Pomrenke, MSN, RN. System Patient Safety Director at USA Health (Mobile, Ala.). Ms. Pomrenke leads patient safety strategy across USA Health’s academic health system. She spearheaded the “Safety Starts with Me” initiative, a transformative systemwide education program that has trained nearly 10,000 staff members and increased safety reporting by more than 400% in four years. Her leadership has also driven a reduction in serious safety events, earning USA Health the Press Ganey “Human Experience Achievement Award” for 2024. Ms. Pomrenke has built interdisciplinary partnerships and launched a safety coach program, while embedding a fair and just culture policy that prioritizes psychological safety. She also mentors medical residents and collaborates with Press Ganey on customized strategies for harm mitigation.
Michael Posencheg, MD. Chief Quality and Safety Officer at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Dr. Posencheg leads teams within Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s Center for Healthcare Quality and Analytics, partnering with clinical and operational teams throughout the organization to continuously evaluate and improve care results. The center is advancing work to measure and improve clinical outcomes for acute and chronic childhood conditions, including the utilization of an operating model that incorporates clinical pathways, decision support and data analytics to efficiently get evidence to practice. The center continues to expand work on diagnostic excellence and is incorporating the investigation of health disparities in all of its quality initiatives in partnership with the system’s Center for Health Equity. Under Dr. Posencheg’s leadership, the system’s implements the “Breakthrough to Zero” program, with an overall goal of building system resilience that can absorb human error and prevent harm. The establishment of a human factors and innovation catalyst program has brought innovative and human-centered design principles to quality and safety initiatives. The system now uses the “SEIPS” framework, based in human-centered design, for learning reviews of patient safety opportunities, and has used design thinking to develop solutions to reduce central line infections, predict which patients may have a clinical decompensation, and improve the accuracy and efficiency of antibiotic ordering. Dr. Posencheg has roles supporting national efforts in pediatric quality and patient safety, including representing the quality and safety sessions on the Pediatric Academic Society planning committee and serving on the contract faculty for the Institute for Healthcare Improvement.
Jeffrey Pothof, MD. Chief Quality Officer at UW Health (Madison, Wis.). Dr. Pothof leads systemwide efforts to improve safety, reduce harm, and enhance patient experience across UW Health. He implemented the “Health Event Reporting Online” system and launched innovative peer review and root cause analysis programs. His public health communications during Covid-19 reached over 1.9 billion global viewers, reinforcing trust in science and vaccines. He co-developed the “Human Factors Analysis and Classification System – Root Cause Analysis 2” model to address system issues behind medical errors, improving reliability. Under his leadership, UW Health has been ranked Wisconsin’s No. 1 hospital by U.S. News & World Report for 14 consecutive years. Dr. Pothof is also a flight physician, educator, and the recipient of numerous national awards for leadership in emergency medicine and patient safety.
Tiffany Potter, DNP, RN. Associate Vice President of System Quality, Safety and Clinical Effectiveness at Memorial Hermann Health System (Houston). Dr. Potter leads enterprisewide strategy to improve patient safety, clinical outcomes and performance across one of the largest integrated health systems in the Houston area, overseeing system-level quality governance and aligning multidisciplinary leaders across physician, nursing, quality and operations functions. She helped redesign quality governance to create a unified accountability model, enabling more consistent execution and reducing clinical variation across multiple hospitals. Dr. Potter has driven initiatives targeting patient safety indicators and hospital-acquired conditions, translating complex data into actionable frontline strategies while fostering a culture of continuous learning. She shares insights and best practices through national forums including the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and Vizient, and her leadership has contributed to recognition for high performance in patient safety and quality. Memorial Hermann Health System has earned Vizient “Top Decile” recognition, Leapfrog “A” safety grades and top U.S. News & World Report rankings under her quality leadership.
Jeffrey Pothof, MD. Chief Quality Officer at UW Health and Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health (Madison). Dr. Pothof is responsible for strategy and operational oversight across infection prevention, patient experience, regulatory performance, clinical documentation and utilization management for UW Health, an academic health system with six main hospitals and more than 100 clinics serving more than 865,000 patients annually. He oversaw the implementation of “HERO,” the health system’s safety event reporting platform, which now receives tens of thousands of reports each year and has strengthened the organization’s ability to identify risk patterns and drive improvement. Dr. Pothof introduced a human-factors-based event investigation model adapted from aviation safety, shifting the focus from individual performance to organizational and environmental conditions that contribute to errors. He also led development of “The UW Health Way,” a Lean-based management framework through which more than 26,000 employees have received structured problem-solving training. A sought-after public communicator, he has participated in more than 4,000 media interviews since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, translating evolving health information for public audiences. UW Health’s University of Wisconsin Hospitals has been ranked the No. 1 hospital in Wisconsin for 14 consecutive years by U.S. News & World Report.
Peter Pronovost, MD, PhD. Chief Quality and Clinical Transformation Officer at University Hospitals (Cleveland). Dr. Pronovost is an internationally recognized leader in patient safety and healthcare transformation, serving as the architect of University Hospitals’ systemwide framework to eliminate defects in value and enhance quality of care. As chief quality and clinical transformation officer, he developed the “living and leading with love” model, which has reshaped the system’s culture and performance. Under his leadership, the system achieved standout results in the Medicare shared savings program, reducing annual per-patient costs to $9,864, which is 29% lower than the national Medicare average. As president of the UH Veale Healthcare Transformation Institute, Dr. Pronovost drives innovation across care delivery and technology, including “Connected Care”, a virtual platform co-developed with nurses that integrates AI and real-time monitoring to alleviate workforce strain and enhance patient support. He also established a leadership academy to train physicians in adaptive leadership and human-centered design, building lasting capacity for transformation. A recipient of national and global recognition, Dr. Pronovost’s impact extends to federal health policy and international patient safety efforts through his advisory roles with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the President’s Council for Science and Technology, and the World Health Organization.
Heidi Raines. Chief Strategy Officer at Sentact (Nashville, Tenn.). Ms. Raines shapes enterprise strategy at Sentact following the company’s December 2025 acquisition of Performance Health Partners, the patient safety software company she founded in 2015 with a mission to help healthcare organizations identify risk before harm occurs. Under her leadership, Performance Health Partners earned the No. 1 Best in KLAS ranking for healthcare safety, risk and compliance management for four consecutive years, including 2026, and was named a KLAS “Consistent High Performer” for 2025, with 100% of surveyed customers reporting the platform fulfills its promises and is part of their long-term plans. In her current role, Ms. Raines focuses on platform integration, long-term innovation and expanding the combined organization’s reach across the patient safety mission, helping healthcare organizations strengthen reporting cultures, learn from safety events, and support frontline teams with tools that improve accountability and outcomes. Her book, Shared Voices: A Framework for Patient and Employee Safety in Healthcare, became a Forbes and Amazon bestseller and a No. 1 new release in multiple healthcare categories. Ms. Raines serves as preceptor faculty in Tulane University’s Master of Health Administration program and is a former board president of the American College of Healthcare Executives’ Women’s Healthcare Executive Network.
Kelly Randall, PhD. Vice President of Patient Safety and Compliance at Ascension (St. Louis). Dr. Randall leads patient safety for Ascension’s extensive national health system, directing initiatives such as tiered huddles, standardized event reporting and safety coaching. She has driven widespread adoption of high-reliability practices, resulting in improved safety culture and significant reductions in patient safety events across the system. A national speaker and educator, Dr. Randall served as keynote at the 2025 Institute for Healthcare Improvement patient safety congress and co-authored its refreshed National Action Plan self-assessment. She has advanced shared learning by helping design Ascension’s national learning management network, which drives continuous improvement across markets and facilities. Dr. Randall brings deep experience in social work and regulatory services.
Nicolas Restrepo, MD. Chief Quality and Patient Safety Officer at Valley Health (Winchester, Va.). Dr. Restrepo, a board-certified urologist with more than 25 years of clinical and leadership experience, leads quality improvement initiatives, patient safety outcomes and the organization’s high reliability journey across Valley Health’s six hospitals and numerous medical practices. He has spearheaded patient safety initiatives at Winchester (Va.) Medical Center since 2012, later expanding those programs throughout the Valley Health system, and received the 2019 Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association “Imagine a Virginia Senior Leader Quality and Patient Safety Award” for his safety and culture improvements. Dr. Restrepo co-founded the Northern Shenandoah Valley Substance Abuse Coalition in 2015, reframing addiction as a treatable condition and addressing the local opioid crisis through community partnerships. He also supported development of the organization’s screening, brief intervention and referral to treatment program. He initiated the “Good Catch” program to recognize staff who identify potential safety concerns before patient harm occurs, and helped create a peer support team called “Care for the Caregiver” for employees following adverse workplace events. Winchester Medical Center has earned Leapfrog “A” safety grades for 12 consecutive years.
Jonathan Rogg, MD. Vice President and Chief Quality Officer at Houston Methodist Hospital. Dr. Rogg leads quality, safety and clinical operations at Houston Methodist. He implemented a unit-based teams model that enhanced collaboration and resulted in improved patient outcomes, including lower fall and pressure injury rates. Dr. Rogg also rolled out a systemwide, secure communication platform for physicians, increasing clinical efficiency and satisfaction. A trained emergency physician, continues to practice clinically as well. Under his leadership, the hospital achieved its highest Vizient ranking to date and continued its No. 1 ranking in Texas according to U.S. News & World Report. Prior to assuming his current role, he served as vice chair at UT Health Houston.
Samantha Ruokis. Vice President of Clinical Performance Excellence at University of Chicago Medicine. Ms. Ruokis leads an expansive portfolio at University of Chicago Medicine spanning quality performance improvement, patient safety, infection prevention, regulatory compliance, risk management, operational excellence, business continuity, emergency management and the system project management office. A trained industrial engineer, she has built a culture of safety anchored in just culture principles and high-reliability systems, producing a 20% year-over-year increase in safety event reporting and a nearly 80% identified reporter rate, which are both indicators of a psychologically safe, learning-oriented environment. Under her leadership, University of Chicago Medical Center earned its 28th consecutive “A” hospital safety grade from The Leapfrog Group in November 2025, a streak dating to 2012 that places it among only 11 hospitals in the U.S. to maintain a perfect record, making it the only hospital in Chicago and the only research-intensive academic medical center in the country to do so. The medical center was also named a Leapfrog “Top Teaching Hospital” for the eighth time in December 2025. Ms. Ruokis was selected as a judge for the inaugural “Patient Safety Prize,” a global initiative awarding $5 million to breakthrough innovations in preventable healthcare harm reduction.
Jacqueline Saito, MD. Chief Quality and Safety Officer and Vice President of Medical Affairs at Children’s National Hospital (Washington, D.C.). Dr. Saito leads enterprisewide safety, quality, infection control and regulatory initiatives, all while continuing to practice as a pediatric surgeon. She has implemented an organizational action plan to improve safety culture and address systemic barriers to optimal care. Nationally, she chairs the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program–Pediatric and co-leads the Children’s Hospital’s Solution for Patient Safety colorectal surgical site infection initiative. Dr. Saito also contributed to the development of pediatric surgery standards and facilitated collaborative efforts to reduce surgical complications. During her tenure Children’s National Hospital has consistently ranked on the U.S. News & World Report “Best Children’s Hospitals Honor Roll”. Her previous roles included executive leadership at St. Louis-based BJC HealthCare and academic positions at Washington University School of Medicine.
Regina Santamarina. Patient Safety Officer at Berkshire Health Systems (Pittsfield, Mass.). Ms. Santamarina leads clinical risk reduction and error prevention strategy across all Berkshire Health Systems facilities, guiding the organization’s commitment to patient safety, performance improvement and clinical excellence in a rural community healthcare setting. She has championed systematic implementation of evidence-based care practices and unified all system facilities under a coordinated framework to reduce patient harm and errors, advancing a culture of continuous improvement through data-driven decision-making and shared learning. Her leadership has supported a meaningful and positive shift in the organization’s culture of safety, with improved communication and reporting practices serving as key pillars of that transformation. Ms. Santamarina also serves as patient and family advocate for ASPirE, a consortium of top cancer centers that grew from the severe immunotherapy complications service and clinical-translational research effort originally based at Boston-based Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute. Effective April 2026, she was appointed interim vice president of quality for Berkshire Health Systems. Berkshire Medical Center earned an “A” hospital safety grade from The Leapfrog Group in fall 2025 and a 4-star rating for overall quality from CMS.
Marcus Schabacker, MD, PhD. President and CEO of ECRI (Fort Washington, Pa.). Dr. Schabacker leads ECRI, a global nonprofit advancing healthcare safety through data-driven insights, human factors engineering, and medical technology assessments. Under his direction, ECRI has led acquisitions of key safety organizations like the Institute for Safe Medication Practices and The Just Culture Company to advance ECRI’s mission to reduce preventable harm. He has been a frequent expert voice in national media and healthcare forums. He often counters medical misinformation by emphasizing independent, evidence-based recommendations. Dr. Schabacker draws on prior experience as a clinician and executive in industry and humanitarian medicine, including work in post-apartheid South Africa.
Julie Schneider. Director of Risk Management and Regulatory Affairs at UCI Health (Orange, Calif.). Ms. Schneider provides enterprisewide strategic and operational leadership for risk management, insurance strategy and regulatory compliance across a six-hospital health system and an expansive ambulatory network at UCI Health. She developed the risk and regulatory fellowship, a first-of-its-kind year-long program that builds risk management and regulatory expertise across disciplines, including physicians, nurses, pharmacists, social workers and allied health professionals. The program aims to embed risk awareness and patient safety ownership directly into clinical operations. Her leadership in proactive, systems-based approaches to patient safety has been recognized with formal acknowledgment from the University of California Office of the President and the American Society for Healthcare Risk Management, and she received the latter’s “Innovation in Patient Safety Award.” Ms. Schneider also serves on the American Society for Healthcare Risk Management advisory board and teaches as its faculty. Additionally, she’s a past president of the Southern California Association of Healthcare Risk Management. UCI Health has earned Leapfrog “Top Hospital” recognition and Vizient “Top Performer” status.
Jennifer Schwehm. Vice President of Corporate Quality and Patient Safety at LCMC Health (New Orleans). Ms. Schwehm oversees critical aspects of corporate quality and patient safety at LCMC Health, bringing experience across multiple roles within the New Orleans healthcare community. Prior to her current position, she served as associate CNO and assistant vice president of quality and patient safety at University Medical Center New Orleans, where she developed and implemented strategies to enhance patient care standards and safety protocols. Her earlier work included directing patient safety efforts at Children’s Hospital of New Orleans, where she also held positions as assistant director of quality and nursing supervisor. Ms. Schwehm began her career as a registered nurse at Children’s Hospital of New Orleans, giving her a foundation in direct patient care that informs her executive quality and safety leadership.
Patty Scott. Patient Safety and Regulatory Officer at University Medical Center of Southern Nevada (Las Vegas). Ms. Scott oversees quality, patient safety and regulatory programs for Nevada’s largest public healthcare system, directing performance improvement and quality assurance, medical staff peer review, and the development of clinical processes and workflows. During her more than seven years at the organization, she has fostered systemwide collaboration to significantly reduce unintended complications and injuries, including comprehensive training and process development to reduce patient falls. Under her leadership, University Medical Center of Southern Nevada became the first and only hospital in Nevada to achieve Magnet recognition from the American Nurses Credentialing Center, achieved in 2026. She also played a key role in the hospital’s DNV comprehensive stroke center certification, completed in 2025, which reflects the highest level of competence for treating serious stroke events. Ms. Scott has supported rapid expansion of the hospital’s employed physician model, including the development of UMC Hospitalists and UMC Emergency Medicine, creating operational workflows that integrate new providers while maintaining her focus on quality and safety.
Edward Seferian, MD. Vice President of Patient Safety and Quality and Chief Quality Officer at Johns Hopkins Hospital (Baltimore). Dr. Seferian provides executive leadership for enterprisewide patient safety, quality, performance improvement and infection prevention at one of the nation’s leading academic medical centers, where he oversees the culture of safety, root cause analysis effectiveness, hospital-acquired infection reduction, and the hospital’s communication and resolution program. He served on the technical expert panel for the CMS patient safety structural measure, helping shape federal expectations for hospital safety infrastructure and governance, and is a member of the Maryland Health Services cost review commission performance measurement work group. Previously, at Los Angeles-based Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, he launched a 100% mortality review process, implemented a transparent safety reporting program and led an initiative to eliminate harm at the end of life while advancing goal-concordant care. Dr. Seferian is a co-investigator on a National Institutes of Health-funded grant focused on improving frontline safety reporting systems, and serves as a professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Johns Hopkins Hospital has received Magnet redesignation and remains on the U.S. News & World Report “Best Hospitals Honor Roll.”
Ulfat Shaikh, MD. Medical Director for Healthcare Quality and Patient Safety at UC Davis Health (Sacramento, Calif.). Dr. Shaikh leads patient safety education for UC Davis Health’s graduate medical education program, developing and guiding clinical training for approximately 900 residents, fellows and their supervising clinicians in systems thinking, root cause analysis and data-driven care. She is the founding chair of the UC Davis Health annual quality forum, now in its 16th year, and leads the UC Davis Health quality improvement training program, now in its 10th year. As clinical quality officer for the California Department of Health Care Services, she previously led a high-impact statewide pay-for-performance program that strengthened data-driven oversight of care for millions of Medicaid members. Dr. Shaikh chairs the American Academy of Pediatrics’ council on quality improvement and patient safety, and also serves on the board of the International Society for Quality in Healthcare, leading the organization’s North America community of practice. She has also served as an associate editor for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s Patient Safety Network, authoring widely used primers on national patient safety goals and root cause analysis. In recognition of her leadership, she received the American Board of Pediatrics’ “Paul V. Miles Award.”
Ghazala Sharieff, MD. Corporate Executive Vice President and Chief Medical and Operations Officer of Acute Care at Scripps Health (San Diego). Dr. Sharieff holds leadership over acute care operations, quality, inpatient metrics, information services, pharmacy, inpatient imaging, engineering, environmental services, food and nutrition, security and disaster and emergency management across Scripps Health’s five hospital campuses. She introduced “Sprint Teams,” which are multidisciplinary groups drawn from across Scripps’ five hospitals that focus on a single safety or quality challenge and implement changes within a year, thus producing significant reductions in infection rates and patient falls across the system. Under this model, surgical site infections decreased 67% overall with a 50% reduction in colon-related surgical infections, central line infections declined 37%, catheter-related urinary tract infections fell 20% and patient falls with injury decreased substantially across emergency departments, urgent care locations, medical-surgical units and ambulatory clinics. Dr. Sharieff also developed the “6 Rs” framework to communicate Scripps’ key organizational objectives to staff, contributing to a 3.2% decrease in average patient length of stay. She oversees Scripps’ opioid stewardship program, which was recognized in 2025 with all Scripps hospitals named to Cal Hospital Compare’s “Opioid Care Honor Roll” for reducing high-dose opioids at discharge and expanding alternative pain management options. In 2025, multiple Scripps hospitals earned “A” safety grades from The Leapfrog Group.
Peter Silver, MD. Senior Vice President and Chief Quality Officer at Northwell Health (New Hyde Park, N.Y.). Dr. Silver leads quality improvement and patient safety strategies across Northwell Health, ensuring the system continually raises the bar on safety standards, clinical processes and patient wellbeing. A 35-year veteran of the health system’s pediatrics department, he most recently served as medical director of Cohen Children’s Medical Center. In his current role, Dr. Silver guides the system’s response to public health crises and serves as a key member of the system’s clinical advisory group. Dr. Silver has spearheaded Joint Commission–sponsored quality initiatives and led national collaboratives through the Children’s Hospital Association to improve sepsis recognition and eliminate central line–associated bloodstream infections. His contributions to quality improvement have been recognized with the United Hospital Fund’s “Excellence in Healthcare” award. He is a fellow in the American College of Critical Care Medicine, American College of Chest Physicians and American Academy of Pediatrics.
Rachel Sisodia, MD. Chief Quality Officer at Mass General Brigham (Boston). Dr. Sisodia is responsible for the quality and safety of all healthcare provided across Mass General Brigham’s 13 hospitals, spanning thousands of physicians and millions of patient lives. Her oversight encompasses clinical outcomes, patient safety and risk management, clinical compliance and regulatory oversight, infection control and biothreats, and clinical documentation integrity. She developed what is described as the world’s largest and most advanced clinical patient reported outcomes program, which has brought the patient’s voice to the forefront across more than 15 million patient visits within Mass General Brigham, balancing what matters most to patients with what is medically required to treat their condition. In addition to her administrative role, Dr. Sisodia is an actively practicing surgeon and gynecologic oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School, where her scholarship in patient reported outcomes has earned national and international recognition. She has published more than 80 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, lectures nationally and internationally, and serves as co-chair of the quality committee of the Society of Gynecologic Oncology. Dr. Sisodia sits on numerous national advisory boards.
Jo-el Sprecher. Patient Experience and Safety Director at Mary Greeley Medical Center (Ames, Iowa). Ms. Sprecher assists senior leadership in the development and operationalization of strategic plans as they relate to patient safety and experience. She is charged with leading patient rounding efforts, internal auditing processes and goal setting. Her work has led to the implementation of a new patient entertainment and engagement system, digital rounding platform, remote nursing and digital patient outreach program, safety rounding and leadership rounding. Among other organizations, Ms. Sprecher is a member of the Quality and Patient Safety Council.
Carole Stockmeier. Senior Vice President of Safety and Reliability at Press Ganey (South Bend, Ind.). Ms. Stockmeier serves as senior vice president of safety and reliability at Press Ganey, where she leads strategic initiatives and solutions integration to optimize safety and performance excellence. She is a member of the executive steering committee of the Press Ganey PSO, the largest patient safety organization in the country with more than 12,000 members across 3,500 healthcare facilities. She also co-leads the “Zero Harm 24/7: collaborative that convenes healthcare leaders committed to eliminating preventable harm. She helped shape the initiative, aligning its 10 critical commitments with CMS’ patient safety structural measure and mobilizing healthcare boards and CEOs around a governance priority rather than an aspirational goal. Ms. Stockmeier is a co-editor and contributing author of Zero Harm: How to Achieve Patient and Workforce Safety in Healthcare, a widely used resource for safety leaders, and has published work in The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety and Patient Safety and Quality Healthcare. Her perspective is informed by her experience as a cancer survivor, giving her direct understanding of the stakes of patient safety from the patient’s point of view. Earlier in her career, as director of safety and performance excellence at Norfolk, Va.-based Sentara Healthcare, she provided operational leadership for patient safety initiatives that earned the organization the American Hospital Association 2004 “Quest for Quality Prize” and the 2005 “John M. Eisenberg Award for Patient Safety and Quality.”
Kristen Tefft. Vice President of Quality and Patient Safety at Oceans Healthcare (Plano, Texas). Ms. Tefft provides systemwide leadership and oversight for quality programs, safety initiatives and performance metrics across Oceans Healthcare’s 48 behavioral health hospitals, spanning inpatient, partial hospitalization and intensive outpatient settings serving patients from children through geriatric populations. She played a central role in creating and stewarding Oceans Healthcare’s public quality report, an accountability initiative that tracks patient outcomes, safety measures and experience metrics while holding the organization to continuous improvement standards. Ms. Tefft fosters a culture where transparency is a strength, creating environments in which teams feel safe discussing gaps and opportunities, thus enabling deeper root cause analysis and sustainable process improvement rather than surface-level fixes. She develops clear systems and repeatable models to ensure consistent execution across both hospital and support center teams, cascading key messages and training through multiple channels to ensure alignment and operational readiness. Prior to joining Oceans Healthcare, she served as vice president of quality at Brentwood, Tenn.-based Springstone Health.
Nicholas Testa, MD. Chief Clinical Officer at Sentact (Nashville, Tenn.). Dr. Testa leads initiatives to advance patient safety and clinical quality at Sentact, a healthcare technology company whose integrated platform, which encompasses rounding, incident reporting, safety huddles and clinical dashboards, is used by 60% of the top 20 health systems and touches millions of patients across thousands of care settings. He brings more than 20 years of clinical hospital leadership to the role, applying a clinician-first lens to ensure Sentact’s technology aligns with real-world clinical workflows and embeds safety directly into daily operations. Prior to joining Sentact, Dr. Testa served as regional chief medical officer for Chicago-based CommonSpirit Health’s California region, the system’s largest, overseeing all 29 California hospitals. There, he led a 35% reduction in serious safety events while simultaneously increasing event reporting rates by 15%. He presented this work at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s 2025 national meeting. During that same period, 95% of CommonSpirit Health’s California hospitals achieved an “A” or “B” Leapfrog hospital safety grade, and the California region was awarded best performing region for safety and quality by the CommonSpirit Health board in 2025. Dr. Testa also leads Sentact’s patient safety organization and external peer review service, overseeing a network of more than 450 physician reviewers. He serves as adjunct voluntary professor at the University of Southern California, teaching undergraduates, medical students and residents in patient safety, quality, process improvement and physician leadership.
Christopher Thomas, MD. Vice President and Chief Quality Officer at FMOL Health (Baton Rouge, La.). Dr. Thomas leads quality strategy for FMOL Health, where he has implemented cutting-edge, evidence-based programs that have achieved dramatic improvements in sepsis outcomes and overall patient safety. He pioneered the first FDA-approved “IntelliSep” sepsis diagnostic integration into emergency departments, which reduced sepsis-related mortality and shortened average length of stay. His innovations include a novel safety scoring system, the expansion of near-miss reporting, and the elevation of patient mobility as a system goal. Dr. Thomas’s leadership has garnered awards such as the 2025 Vizient “Brilliance Award” and multiple Leapfrog “A” designations. He also chairs the Catholic Health Association clinical quality affinity group and serves on the New Orleans-based LSU Health Sciences Center advisory council.
Alexander Tomich, DNP, RN. Vice President of Clinical Excellence at Trinity Health Illinois/Indiana Region. Dr. Tomich leads clinical excellence across a two-state region encompassing Maywood, Ill.-based Loyola Medicine and Mishawaka, Ind.-based Saint Joseph Health System, with accountability for patient safety, clinical quality, regulatory readiness, patient experience, risk management, infection prevention and employee health. A doctorally prepared nurse with more than 31 years of registered nursing experience, he holds certification in infection control and board designation as a fellow of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology. Prior to joining Trinity Health, he spent 13 years at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, most recently as system director of infection prevention and control, where he led large-scale regulatory readiness, quality improvement and infection prevention programs that achieved more than a 65% improvement in hospital-acquired device-related infections. Dr. Tomich led Ebola and Covid-19 response efforts at Rush, developing a high-consequence infectious disease program and unit, and co-led systemwide Covid-19 efforts that supported a vaccination program reaching more than 100,000 individuals. In 2024 and 2025, three Loyola Medicine hospitals earned or renewed Magnet designations under his regional clinical excellence leadership.
Sara Toomey, MD. Senior Vice President, Chief Safety and Quality Officer and Chief Experience Officer at Boston Children’s Hospital. Dr. Toomey leads strategy for patient safety, quality and care experience at Boston Children’s Hospital, overseeing initiatives designed to ensure safe, equitable and high-quality pediatric care and integrating evidence-based practices with frontline clinical insight. As director and principal investigator of the federally funded center of excellence for pediatric quality measurement, she spearheads the development and implementation of nationally recognized pediatric quality measures that have influenced standards used across the country. Under her guidance, Boston Children’s has strengthened its approach to safety and quality measurement, implemented data-driven improvement initiatives and fostered a culture in which feedback from patients, families and staff directly informs operational and clinical decisions. A practicing hospitalist and associate professor at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Toomey combines active patient care with executive leadership, ensuring patient and family voices remain central to quality improvement efforts. Boston Children’s Hospital earned Magnet designation under her leadership.
Rafael Torres, MD. Chief Quality Officer at White Plains (N.Y.) Hospital. Dr. Torres is responsible for quality across all touchpoints at White Plains Hospital, a 292-bed institution serving as the tertiary hub of the Bronx, N.Y. Montefiore Health System. The hospital handles more than 28,000 discharges and nearly 90,000 emergency department visits annually. In 2025, the hospital received its 14th consecutive “A” hospital safety grade from The Leapfrog Group and earned a Healthgrades “Patient Safety Excellence Award,” placing it among the top 5% of hospitals in the nation for patient safety. White Plains Hospital also earned its fourth consecutive 5-star rating for quality from CMS, and was the only hospital in the country to receive the 2025 American Nurses Credentialing Center Magnet prize for its diabetes management program thanks to an innovative remote patient monitoring initiative. Dr. Torres has been recognized as a “Healthcare Hero” by Westchester Magazine and with the “Excellence in Healthcare Award” by the United Hospital Fund.
James Tucker, BSN, RN. Assistant Vice President of Quality, Safety and Regulatory for Orlando (Fla.) Health West Florida Region. Mr. Tucker serves as the assistant vice president of quality, safety and regulatory for Orlando Health’s West Florida Region. Previously, he served as chief quality officer for Orlando Health Bayfront Hospital in St. Petersburg, Fla., leading transformational change and performance improvement initiatives. Bringing experience in safety, quality, improvement methods, nursing and analytics across various Connecticut-based health systems, Mr. Tucker is known for helming successful clinical improvement initiatives and bringing about a culture of safety, collaboration and accountability.
Jodi Ulmen. Director of Clinical Quality, Outcomes and Compliance at Madelia (Minn.) Health. With 31 years dedicated to patient safety and quality, Ms. Ulmen serves as patient safety director, safety officer and quality leader at Madelia Health, a rural critical access hospital, where she leads the organization’s performance improvement program, risk management functions and Joint Commission accreditation efforts. Her responsibilities include proactive risk assessments, failure mode and effects analyses, sentinel event response and oversight of incident reporting systems, as well as organizational safety, emergency preparedness and environment of care programs. She works with multidisciplinary committees and frontline caregivers to embed safety and quality into everyday practice, and coordinates corrective action plans to ensure year-round regulatory readiness. Ms. Ulmen reports to administration and serves as a key liaison between clinical staff, leadership and regulatory bodies at the organization.
George Verghese, MD. Senior Vice President and Chief Clinical Quality Officer at Teladoc Health (New York). Dr. Verghese leads clinical quality improvement and patient safety, clinical care model design, clinical research and evaluation, and value-based care analytics at Teladoc Health. The organization is the world’s largest for virtual care, serving more than 100 million patients. He created a formal patient safety program purpose-built for virtual care, designing a novel framework and patient safety concern classification system that reflects the fundamental differences in patient-clinician interactions in digital settings, and enables more accurate identification, tracking and prevention of safety risks. Dr. Verghese also leads the Institute of Patient Safety and Quality of Virtual Care, which was the first patient safety organization established for virtual care in the healthcare industry. A pediatrician and pediatric cardiologist, he maintains an active practice as a part-time pediatric cardiologist at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. His programs have earned recognition from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the National Committee for Quality Assurance.
Lisbeth Votruba, RN. Chief Clinical Officer at AvaSure (Belmont, Mich.). Ms. Votruba has significantly advanced patient safety through virtual technology at AvaSure. She has driven the company’s growth, providing safer environments for patients and achieving hundreds of millions of live monitoring hours. Ms. Votruba pioneered video monitoring for fall-risk patients and has authored several research articles on virtual care’s benefits. She created eLearning modules for clinicians and hosted numerous national webinars to promote patient safety. Her leadership at AvaSure continues to revolutionize patient safety and care delivery.
Sandeep Wadhwa, MD. Global Chief Medical Officer at Solventum (St. Paul, Minn.). Dr. Wadhwa oversees patient safety, payment and quality strategies at Solventum, helping healthcare systems and governments globally reduce avoidable harm and advance value-based care. He led the development of the Solventum “Ambulatory Potentially Preventable Complications” system, now used in U.S. News & World Report rankings to measure outpatient procedural safety. Board certified in internal medicine and geriatrics, he also serves as an associate clinical professor at the University of Colorado and volunteers at its seniors clinic. Dr. Wadhwa previously served as Colorado’s state Medicaid director and held leadership roles at Solera Health, Noridian and McKesson. He also contributes nationally through his board service at Duluth, Minn.-based Essentia Health, the nonprofit Reinvestment Fund, and data and mapping tool Policy Map. Throughout his career, he has been deeply committed to improving care for vulnerable and underserved populations.
Heidi Wald, MD. Chief Quality Officer for Denver Health. Dr. Wald is a board-certified geriatrician and physician leader, using her role as chief quality officer to advance safe and reliable healthcare through cultural transformation and system design. She also serves as visiting associate professor of medicine at the University of Colorado. Previously, Dr. Wald was chief quality and safety officer at Salt Lake City-based Intermountain Health, leading initiatives to improve quality, patient safety, patient experience and equity outcomes across 32 hospitals. Dr. Wald has authored more than 60 peer-reviewed articles on patient safety and quality of care for older adults in hospitals and nursing homes.
Shaun Warren. Assistant Vice President of System Quality and Patient Safety at Ochsner Health (New Orleans). Mr. Warren designs, implements and leads enterprise quality and patient safety programs across Ochsner Health’s 46-hospital system, serving as the organization’s subject matter expert in national benchmarking and comparative quality analytics. A former U.S. Army combat medic and commissioned Medical Service Corps officer, he led medical teams during Operation Iraqi Freedom and major domestic disaster response efforts including Hurricane Katrina, an experience that continues to shape his focus on structured decision-making and team reliability in clinical settings. He designed and administered Ochsner Health’s initial in-house Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality hospital survey on patient safety culture and led The Joint Commission “ORO 2.0” high reliability organization assessments for hospital boards, creating a consistent foundation for governance and safety culture measurement across the system’s growing enterprise. Mr. Warren led the system’s first enterprisewide falls prevention collaborative and served as primary architect of the organization’s root cause analysis and action program, developing the first systemwide toolkit and advancing human factors principles in event reporting.
Brook Watts, MD. Chief Quality Officer for University of Michigan Health (Ann Arbor). Dr. Watts leads the safety and quality initiatives that support Michigan Medicine’s journey to become a highly reliable organization. She champions the implementation of safety coaches across the organization who model high reliability skills for team members. Dr. Watts also leads the patient harm composite measure, a helpful tool for identifying patient safety improvement areas. She has over 20 years of involvement in quality work and has held a variety of leadership positions, including the role of senior vice president for quality and chief medical officer for community and public health at the MetroHealth System in Cleveland. Additionally, Dr. Watts is a member of the editorial board for the Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety.
Lydia Weber, DNP. Chief Patient Safety and High Reliability Officer at Hackensack Meridian Health (Edison, N.J.). Dr. Weber serves as vice president and chief patient safety officer for Hackensack Meridian Health, responsible for developing a culture of safety, reducing preventable harm and leading a long-term high reliability strategy across the health network. She chairs both the system’s safety council and patient safety committee, and serves as the primary point of contact for the integrated patient safety program for senior leadership and the board of trustees. Dr. Weber began her career as a perioperative registered nurse and progressed through clinical education, quality and regulatory roles before reaching her current executive position. She co-designs high reliability training including programs for the most senior network leadership, and extends high reliability principles beyond hospital settings to ambulatory and wellness centers. Hackensack University Medical Center was named to the U.S. News & World Report honor roll in 2025 and ranked No. 1 in the New York metro area and No. 1 in New Jersey, while the system became the first health network in the U.S. to achieve The Joint Commission’s sustainable health certification in 2024 and the first to receive its health equity certification in 2023.
Anne Weekley, RN. Vice President of Quality and Patient Experience at University of Maryland–Charles Regional Medical Center (La Plata). Ms. Weekley oversees quality, safety and patient experience for UM Charles Regional. Her efforts led to the hospital’s receipt of the 2025 Healthgrades “Patient Safety Excellence Award” and Health.com’s “Innovative Hospital Award” for the mobility rounds and reports program. A former labor and delivery nurse, Ms. Weekley brings clinical insight to her role, driving performance improvement initiatives and fostering a culture of high reliability. She also launched the hospital’s patient family advisory council, helping to bridge patient perspectives with system-level improvements. Under her guidance, the hospital earned honors in stroke, diabetes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease care from organizations including the American Hospital Association and U.S. News & World Report.
Shannon Wentz. Senior Director of Patient Safety and Quality at University Medical Center New Orleans and New Orleans East Hospital (New Orleans). Ms. Wentz brings more than two decades of healthcare leadership experience to her current role, where she oversees systemwide safety and quality initiatives with a strong focus on preventable harm reduction and regulatory readiness. Under her leadership, the organization successfully achieved both The Joint Commission triennial survey and comprehensive stroke certification in 2025. Previously, she served as area vice president of palliative and aging services at Baton Rouge, La.-based Carpenter Health Network, where she expanded home-based care models across multiple states and secured participation in the CMS “Dementia GUIDE” program. During her tenure at Ochsner Health, she launched and scaled a systemwide palliative medicine service line, achieving more than 100% growth in program volume and leading efforts that resulted in The Joint Commission palliative medicine specialty certification. Earlier work at the Jackson-based University of Mississippi Medical Center and Children’s of Mississippi produced significant reductions in infection rates and patient safety indicators, and contributed to the organization’s baby-friendly designation. Ms. Wentz is a fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives.
Paige Wickner, MD. Vice President of Enterprise Patient Safety at CVS Health (Woonsocket, R.I.). Dr. Wickner leads enterprisewide patient safety at CVS Health, partnering across patient care businesses to deliver safe, high-quality care. She also directs the system’s Patient Safety Organization, guiding event response, proactive safety solutions, and innovative structures to reduce errors and improve outcomes. Prior to joining CVS Health, she held multiple leadership roles at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, including head of the division of allergy and clinical immunology quality and safety and medical director in the department of quality and safety. A practicing allergist and immunologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, she also serves as a part-time assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Wickner has operationalized and published quality improvement initiatives focused on drug allergy, antibiotic stewardship and Covid-19 vaccination.
Denise Wilson, DNP. System Director for Regulatory Compliance and Accreditation at SSM Health (St. Louis). Dr. Wilson leads enterprisewide regulatory readiness across SSM Health’s 24 hospitals, 540-plus clinics, 11 post-acute sites and behavioral health services. She designed and deployed SSM Health’s internal comprehensive assessment program, a systemwide mock survey model that saved the organization more than $1 million in avoided survey-related costs while materially improving infection prevention, equipment readiness and high-risk documentation compliance. Dr. Wilson pioneered the application of conversion rate methodology to patient complaints and grievances, pairing it with a grievance severity rating scale that standardized evaluation across the enterprise, ultimately creating an early warning system for regulatory risk. In 2026, she was featured by The Joint Commission for her work advancing “National Patient Safety Goal 2: Culture of Safety,” and in 2025 she was invited by the Health Resources and Services Administration to serve on a technical expert panel advising on National Safety and Quality Standards for Organ Procurement Organizations. She received the “Distinguished Quality Professional Award” from the Missouri Association for Healthcare Quality in 2025.
Suzanne Worthington. Chief Quality Officer at Orlando (Fla.) Health. Ms. Worthington provides enterprise leadership for clinical quality, patient safety and care delivery performance at Orlando Health, setting the organization’s quality strategy in partnership with the board of directors, senior leadership and medical staff. Ms. Worthington brings 30 years of healthcare operations experience to the role, a background that informed her approach of structuring processes so clinicians actively define and drive improvement while the system provides strategy, tools, analytics and accountability. A hallmark accomplishment has been implementing a standardized, systemwide quality scorecard and redesigning the organization’s monthly quality close to function with the rigor of a financial close, transforming it from a one-way summary into an engaged, performance-driven forum where site executives speak directly to local results and candidly address gaps. Every senior leader across Orlando Health participates in the monthly quality close, reinforcing shared accountability beyond clinical operations and accelerating the spread of effective interventions across sites. Ms. Worthington also serves as executive sponsor of the system’s workplace violence prevention steering committee and regulatory council, and is a member of the Florida Hospital Association quality and patient safety committee. She previously served as president of Orlando Health Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women and Babies and as COO of the same hospital.
Shephali Wulff, DO. System Vice President and Chief Quality Officer at SSM Health (St. Louis). Dr. Wulff directs enterprisewide strategies to strengthen reliability, reduce preventable harm and advance clinical outcomes at SSM Health, overseeing the center for clinical excellence, which encompasses safety, quality, regulatory compliance, clinical integration and antimicrobial stewardship. Since joining SSM Health in 2020, her leadership has delivered measurable results: a 45% reduction in patient safety indicators, a 50% reduction in hospital mortality and a 60% reduction in central line-associated bloodstream infection, catheter-associated urinary tract infection and hospital-onset Clostridioides difficile infection rates. Dr. Wulff built an improvement model in which centralized subject matter experts develop evidence-based standards while frontline teams own implementation and continuously feed insights back to the center, enabling best practices to emerge from the bedside and scale across the system. She also serves as a managing partner and attending physician providing inpatient and outpatient consultative infectious diseases care across seven acute care hospitals in the St. Louis metro region. 10 SSM Health hospitals were named to the Forbes “Top Hospitals” 2026 list.
David Wyatt, PhD, RN. CEO and Executive Director at the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (Denver). Dr. Wyatt assumed the role of CEO and executive director of the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses in February 2025, bringing more than 20 years of leadership experience in surgical services and healthcare management to the position. He joined the organization from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, where he served as CNO, overseeing the operational and clinical leadership of inpatient, procedural and hospital-based ambulatory departments and a staff of 3,000. Previously, he served as vice president of perioperative enterprise at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn., responsible for the operational and strategic leadership of perioperative services across multiple locations and surgical care settings. Dr. Wyatt has been an AORN member for more than 25 years, served two terms on its board of directors from 2008 to 2012, and was elected president for the 2020-2021 term, overseeing the organization’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. He has contributed to AORN task forces and committees addressing the nursing shortage, nursing leadership, strategic governance and the formation of AORN Syntegrity. A fellow of both the American Academy of Nursing and AORN, Dr. Wyatt’s career spans clinical nursing, executive management and academia.
Janice Yanez. Director of Patient Safety at Nicklaus Children’s Health System (Miami). Ms. Yanez leads the patient safety agenda for Nicklaus Children’s Health System, where she developed and launched the “Safety for All” framework to embed harm prevention across patient, staff and visitor experiences. Her leadership helped drive measurable reductions in preventable safety events and healthcare-associated infections while increasing systemwide collaboration and standardization. With her support in key initiatives, the organization earned consecutive Leapfrog “Top Hospital” awards from 2022 to 2024 for outstanding safety performance. Ms. Yanez has been honored with the Solutions for Patient Safety “Todd Conklin Award” for excellence in safety leadership and innovation.
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