Elizabeth Mort is a practicing general internist Senior Vice President of Quality and Safety, Chief Quality Officer at the MGH and the MGPO. Dr Mort has extensive experience in health care quality measurement, quality and safety improvement, managed care medical management strategies, pay for performance contracting and hospital operations.  At MGH she oversees the Lawrence Center for Quality & Safety and is responsible for high stakes quality and safety measurement and improvement work across a broad range of initiatives. 

Dr. Mort is nationally recognized as an expert in Quality and Safety and has conducted research, participated in many regional, state and national committees, and presented at national venues.  She was on the AHA panel on Healthcare Acquired Conditions.  She co-chaired the Mass Medical Society’s committee on the quality of medical practice.  She has served on the NQF Steering Committee for Additional Priorities for Acute Hospital Quality Measures.  Dr. Mort also served on the NQF Expert Panel for Patient Reported Outcome measures, was co-chair of the NQF Expert panel on Measuring Affordability from the Patient’s Perspective, and a member of the NQF Person and Family Centered Care Steering Committee.  She serves on the CMS Hospital Quality Stars Leadership Work Group.

Dr. Mort has been listed in Becker’s Hospital Review - 50 Experts Leading the Field of Patient Safety annually since 2013.

Dr. Mort completed her residency in primary care internal medicine at MGH followed by a two-fellowship at the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School.  She also completed a Masters in Public Health at the University of Michigan which focused on Health Planning and Administration as well as Population Planning.   Dr Mort is currently an Assistant Professor in both the Department of Medicine and Health Care Policy at HMS.   

Dr. Sonali Desai is the Medical Director of Ambulatory Patient Safety at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the Medical Director of Quality for the Department of Medicine, and is a practicing rheumatologist. Dr. Desai conducts research on improving the quality of care and patient safety with a focus on the ambulatory setting, with over 30 peer-reviewed publications. Dr. Desai’s contributions at Brigham & Women’s hospital (BWH) cover clinical care, research, administrative, and teaching roles. She sees complex rheumatology patients at the BWH Arthritis Center, a busy, tertiary care referral practice with both local and regional referrals and at the BWH Fish Center for Women’s Health, a multispecialty practice with a unique, integrated care model for women with rheumatic diseases.

In the Department of Medicine’s Quality Program, Dr. Desai has lead work on chronic disease management in diabetes, hypertension and rheumatoid arthritis; high-risk hospital admissions for heart failure and COPD; opioid management, subspecialty focused care such as inflammatory bowel disease, hepatitis, HIV, and asthma. In the Ambulatory Patient Safety realm, Dr. Desai has developed programs in safety reporting and feedback, medication reconciliation, S.A.F.E. approach for staff safety, and safety nets to reduce missed and delayed diagnosis of colon and lung cancer. She is expanding her team and focus to pharmacist-led medication error reduction, safety nets for cervical, breast and prostate cancer, and diagnostic error.

Dr. Desai is also an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and served as a Program Director (2015-2017) for an innovative global education, blended learning course titled Safety, Quality, Informatics, and Leadership. She is a native of Massachusetts and attended both college and medical school at Brown University in Rhode Island. She completed her internal medicine residency and Chief residency at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, her rheumatology fellowship at BWH, and her MPH at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Dr. Emily Aaronson is an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at Harvard Medical School and an attending physician in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). Prior to this, Dr. Aaronson was a resident in the Havard Affiliated Emergency Medicine Residency, where she served as a chief resident. She then completed the Harvard Medical School fellowship in Patient Safety and Quality Improvement, and a Masters in Public Health at the Harvard School of Public Health. Before medical school, Dr. Aaronson worked in healthcare consulting for the consulting arm of the Advisory Board Company. Dr. Aaronson currently is involved in the MGH safety infrastructure that reviews safety reports and SREs throughout the hospital, and participates in the Root Caues Analysis of major events. She is also a member of the MGH Emergency Department Quality and Safety leadership team, where she participates in review of adverse events in the Emergency Department. Her recent work has focused on how to harmonize quality across health care systems, improving the care for patients with sepsis and improving healthcare communication.

Stanley W. Ashley, MD is the Frank Sawyer Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School and a general, gastrointestinal and oncologic surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, A graduate of Oberlin College and Cornell University Medical College, he completed a residency in general surgery and did a research fellowship in gastrointestinal physiology at Washington University in St. Louis. He subsequently served on the faculties of Washington University, the University of California at Los Angeles, and, since 1996, Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School. At the Brigham, he has served as Program Director of the General Surgery Residency, Chief of Surgery at Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates/Atrius Health, Vice Chairman of the Department of Surgery, and most recently Chief Medical Officer and Senior Vice President for Medical Affairs. Dr. Ashley is a gastrointestinal surgeon. His research, which has been funded by both the Department of Veterans Affairs and the National Institute of Health, has examined examined the both pathophysiology and clinical aspects of GI disease but also surgical education and policy. Recently he has focused on physician education, both at the graduate and postgraduate levels, and on practical aspects of measuring physician quality and value. Dr. Ashley is a gastrointestinal surgeon. His research, which has been funded by both the Department of Veterans Affairs and the National Institute of Health, has examined examined the both pathophysiology and clinical aspects of GI disease but also surgical education and policy. Recently he has focused on physician education, both at the graduate and postgraduate levels, and on practical aspects of measuring physician quality and value.He is the author of more than 400 publications. He serves on numerous editorial boards, including the Journal of Gastrointestinal Surgery and the Journal of the American College of Surgeons. He is editor of Current Problems in Surgery and was past editor ACS Surgery: Principles & Practice. He is a former Chair of the American Board of Surgery and more recently served on the Board of Directors of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. He is currently Past President and Chair of the Board of the Society for Surgery of the Alimentary Tract.

Dr. Bates is an internationally renowned expert in patient safety, using information technology to improve care, quality-of-care, cost-effectiveness, and outcomes assessment in medical practice. He is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and a Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health, where he co-directs the Program in Clinical Effectiveness. He directs the Center for Patient Safety Research and Practice at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He served as external program lead for research in the World Health Organization’s Global Alliance for Patient Safety and is past president of the International Society for Quality in Healthcare (ISQua) and the editor of the Journal of Patient Safety. He has been elected to the Institute of Medicine, the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians and the American College of Medical Informatics, and was chairman of the Board of the American Medical Informatics Association. He has published over 700 peer-reviewed papers which have been cited over 100,000 times; he has an h-index of 147, which ranks him among the 400 most cited biomedical researchers of any type.

Kimberley Blumenthal, MD, MSc is an Allergist/Immunologist and drug allergy researcher Massachusetts General Hospital and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She is the Director of Allergy/Immunology Clinical Epimediology and Outcomes Research within the Division of Rheumatology Allergy and Immunology and the Quality and Safety Officer for Allergy at the Edwin P. Lawrence Center for Quality and Safety. Dr. Blumenthal performs drug allergy research that uses methods of epidemiology, informatics, economics, and decision science. Her research is funded by the NIH and foundations, including the American Academicy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology Foundation and CRICO, the risk management foundation. Dr. Blumenthal is recognized nationally for having created innovative approaches to the evaluation of penicillin and cephalosporin antiobiotic allergies in the hospital that have since been adopted by other hospitals throughout the US and internationally, broadly referenced, and incorporated into expert recommendations. Dr. Blumenthal has authored more than 50 peer-reviewed publications. Dr Blumenthal graduated from Columbia University with a BA in Economics. She studied medicine at Yale University School of Medicine, which she completed in 2009, before training at the Massachusetts General Hospital for Internal Medicine and Allergy and Immunology. She completed a Master of Science in Clinical Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in 2017. 

Kathryn Britton, MD, MPH is a practicing cardiologist and the Medical Director of Care Transitions at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA. In her role within the BWH Department of Quality of Safety, Dr. Britton is charged with enhancing the quality of care for patients as they transition through the care continuum. Some specific examples of this work include efforts to improve the quality and coordination of post-acute care and to reduce preventable readmissions.

Jeffrey B. Cooper, Ph.D. is Professor of Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. He is the founder, Executive Director Emeritus and Senior Fellow of the Center for Medical Simulation, which is dedicated to the use of simulation in healthcare to improve the process of education and training and to avoid risk to patients.

Dr. Cooper is one of the pioneers in what is now called patient safety. He did landmark research in medical errors in the 1970’s, is a co-founder of the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation (APSF). He was Director of Biomedical Engineering at the Massachusetts General Hospital for ten years and Director of Biomedical Engineering of the Partners Healthcare System for fourteen years. He is author or co-author of over 140 peer reviewed articles and book chapters.

Dr. Cooper has been awarded several honors for his work in patient safety, including the 2003 John M. Eisenberg Award for Lifetime Achievement in Patient Safety from the National Quality Forum and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations and the 2004 Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Academy of Clinical Engineering. The Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care of the MGH established the Jeffrey B. Cooper Patient Safety award in his honor. He received the Distinguished Service Award of the American Society of Anesthesiologists in 2013, the first non-MD to receive the honor. In 2014, he was awarded the JS Gravenstein Award for lifetime achievement by the Society for Technology in Anesthesia and named one of the first two members for the Hall of Fame of American College of Clinical Engineering and is among the inaugural fellows of the Academy of the Society for Simulation in Healthcare.

Jeffrey B. Cooper, Ph.D. is Professor of Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. He is the founder, Executive Director Emeritus and Senior Fellow of the Center for Medical Simulation, which is dedicated to the use of simulation in healthcare to improve the process of education and training and to avoid risk to patients.

Dr. Cooper is one of the pioneers in what is now called patient safety. He did landmark research in medical errors in the 1970’s, is a co-founder of the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation (APSF). He was Director of Biomedical Engineering at the Massachusetts General Hospital for ten years and Director of Biomedical Engineering of the Partners Healthcare System for fourteen years. He is author or co-author of over 140 peer reviewed articles and book chapters.

Involved in: Pediatric Intensivist, Partners Clinical Process Improvement; medical ethics

Dr. Dankers grew up in Monroe, WA and attended Williams College where he studied Philosophy. After college, he worked for three years at the Advisory Board Company in Washington D.C., which provides business strategy research and consulting services for hospitals. He then attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he obtained his M.D. and M.B.A.  He completed internal medicine residency at The Massachusetts General Hospital and remained at the MGH for three years following residency, splitting his time between clinical work as a hospitalist and quality and safety work as a member of the Edward P. Lawrence Center for Quality and Safety.  In 2013, Dr. Dankers joined the Department of Quality and Safety at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.  As Associate Chief Quality Officer, he worked on Hospital Acquired Condition reduction, mortality reduction, improving the patient experience, and in strengthening safety culture through the application of Just Culture and reliability management principles.  In 2018, Dr. Dankers joined Partners Healthcare as the Associate Chief Quality Officer, where he helps oversee ambulatory quality improvement, quality and safety collaboratives, Patient Reported Outcomes work, and the government payment and policy team in the Quality, Safety, and Value group.  He continues to practice as a hospitalist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Dr. Timothy G. Ferris is chief executive officer of the Massachusetts General Physicians Organization and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Trained in internal medicine and pediatrics, Tim is a practicing primary care physician at Mass General. Prior positions include the senior vice president for population health at Partners HealthCare, medical director of the Mass General Physicians Organization, and vice president for quality for the MGH Department of Pediatrics. His clinical interests include caring for medically complex patients, and home visits to the elderly. Tim led the design and implementation of system-wide care delivery changes at Partners in response to novel risk-sharing contracts for Medicare, Commercial, and Medicaid populations. These programs were administered through the Center for Population Health which Tim founded through an industry partnership, touching over 1 million patients annually. The programs spanned the continuum of care, including over 5000 clinicians in primary care, specialty care, post-acute and home based services, and included novel IT based patient services, analytics, and incentives.

Tim has played multiple roles at the national and international level, including chairing the steering committee of the National Quality Forum and participating on multiple committees at the National Academy of Medicine. He is currently a member of the Secretary of Health and Human Services independent advisory council on physician payment policy. Tim serves on the board of England’s National Health Service (NHS Improvement). In addition to his past National Institutes of Health and foundation grants, Tim designed a six-year Medicare demonstration project that used focused investments in patient services for complex patients that resulted in lower mortality and costs. The program received national attention and became a model for similar programs in the United States and abroad.

Tim trained at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health and has co-authored more than 130 publications in the areas of health care quality measurement, risk adjustment, health disparities and health information technology.

Dr. Merranda Logan is a Nephrologist at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital, where she holds administrative leadership roles as the Associate Chief Quality Officer for the hospital and the physician’s organization, Site Director for the Harvard Medical School fellowship in Patient Safety and Quality, and Director of the Morton Swartz Initiative for Physician Wellness in the Department of Medicine. She completed a Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Fellowship at Harvard Medical School and completed a Masters Degree in Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Logan was the first physician fellow at The Joint Commission. She is board certified in Internal Medicine, Nephrology and Patient Safety.

Dr. Mallika Mendu is Medical Director for Quality and Safety at Brigham and Women's Hospital. Dr. Mendu is also a practicing nephrologist, following inpatients and outpatients with chronic kidney disease and end stage renal disease. In addition, she is the director for quality improvement for the Nephrology Division and Associate Medical Director for Partners Center for Population Health.

She received her MD and MBA degrees from the Yale School of Medicine and Yale School of Management. During her internal medicine residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, she was involved in the Medicine Management Leadership Track and developed an interest in addressing system-level deficiencies in quality and care delivery by implementing innovative interventions. She pursued a clinical and research fellowship in nephrology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, and conducted research related to quality improvement.

Dr. Mendu is currently involved in clinical research related to improving care delivery, quality improvement and population health, and has over 25 peer-reviewed publications. Within the Department of Quality and Safety, Dr. Mendu's responsibilities are focused on mortality review and collaborating with department quality leaders to address systems issues identified through mortality review.

Gregg S. Meyer, MD, MSc, is the Chief Clinical Officer of the Partners Healthcare System in Boston, Massachusetts, responsible for overall direction, operations, and management of system aspects of healthcare delivery throughout the Partners Healthcare delivery system. Dr. Meyer is also a Professor of Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

Before returning to the Partners system Dr Meyer served as the Chief Clinical Officer and Executive Vice-President for Population Health at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and the Senior Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs and Paul B. Batalden Professor and Chair at the Geisel School of Medicine. There he provided clinical leadership to Dartmouth-Hitchcock’s efforts to create a sustainable health system to serve northern New England and serve as a national model.

Prior to coming to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Meyer served as Senior Vice President for the Edward P. Lawrence Center for Quality and Safety at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Massachusetts General Physicians Organization. A national leader in the area of quality and safety, Dr. Meyer led the multi-faceted efforts of the MGH/MGPO in quality and safety. He also led the care redesign efforts at Mass General which aim to improve both the quality and efficiency of care for common clinical conditions. Most recently Dr. Meyer chaired the committee charged with defining the future of clinical information systems for Partners Healthcare.

Prior to that Dr. Meyer served as the Medical Director of the MGPO, the largest physician group practice in New England. There Dr. Meyer, a practicing internist, provided leadership to the MGPO’s medical management efforts. In that role he developed novel approaches to payment for performance and led a team which created a care management program for vulnerable Medicare beneficiaries which has been cited by the Congressional Budget Office as one of the few CMS Demonstration programs which measurably improved quality while generating real savings to the healthcare system.

Dr. Meyer was previously the Director of the Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). There he was responsible for conducting and supporting research on the measurement, improvement, and reporting of health care quality including clinical performance measurement, patient safety issues, and consumer surveys. He took the lead position in articulating the Department of Health and Human Service’s quality and safety agenda, and coordinating activity with other federal and non-governmental entities. He has served on numerous key healthcare boards and committees including the Joint Commission’s Board of Commissioners, National Committee for Quality Assurance’s Committee on Performance Measurement, the World Health Organization’s Scientific Peer Review Group on Health Systems Performance Assessment, Institute of Medicine panels, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Payment Reform Advisory Committee, the National Patient Safety Foundation’s Board of Directors, the Special Medical Advisory Group for the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Board of Directors of Virginia Mason Medical Center, and NASA’s Medical Policy Board.

Before his tenure at AHRQ, Dr. Meyer was an Associate Professor at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS) where he served as Division Director for General Medicine, coordinated the design and analysis of the Department of Defense's National Quality Management Project, and developed curricula for senior military medical leaders in quality improvement. While at USUHS Dr. Meyer was an active duty Medical Corps officer and Colonel in the United States Air Force.

Dr. Meyer is a Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude graduate of Union College and magna cum laude graduate of Albany Medical College. He earned a Masters degree at Oxford University where he was a Rhodes Scholar. In addition, he holds a masters degree from the Department of Health Policy and Management from the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Meyer also served as a fellow in the U. S. Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee’s health office. He has authored over 150 articles, editorials, chapters and monographs and is board certified in Internal Medicine practicing adult primary care.

Dr. Miller is a practicing cardiologist with a primary interest in the interface of clinical information systems with clinical care, and the effects of that interface on clinician training and workflow, patient safety, and quality improvement. She received her BS in Biomedical Engineering from University of Iowa, and an MS and PhD in Neuroscience and MD from the University of Michigan. Dr. Miller has administrative activities at the division, department, hospital, and enterprise level with emphasis on IS/clinical informatics and patient safety in her role as Associate CMIO for Partners. Dr. Miller is an Assistant Professor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Associate Editor for the BWH interactive Clinical Problem Solving Series of The New England Journal of Medicine.

Dr Pian-Smith is the Director of Quality & Safety in the Department of Anesthesia at MGH. In this role, she oversees the Quality Assurance Committee and the Quality & Safety Improvement Committee. She is a faculty member of the Partners COE in Healthcare Quality & Patient Safety, and serves on the Quality & Patient Safety Committee of MGH. She also served on the Quality of Care Committee of the MGH Board of Trustees. She is the Distinguished Endowed Scholar for Quality and Safety.

She is a graduate of the Comprehensive Patient Safety Leadership Fellowship of the American Hospital Association (AHA) and the National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF). She completed the Rabkin Fellowship in Medical Education and the Rabkin Advanced Fellowship in Medical Education, both at HMS. During her fellowships, and as the PI of a Foundation for Anesthesia Education and Research (FAER) grant, Dr. Pian-Smith developed and implemented innovative curriculum at the Center for Medical Simulation and at MGH to teach clinicians the skills and language of "speaking up". Specifically the lessons foster collaborative questioning and challenging across hierarchical gradients, with the goal of improving patient safety, supporting education, and enhancing the role of all members of care teams. She has published on this topic and lectures nationally and internationally.

She is Co-Investigator of a CRICO grant for simulation-based team-training of OR personnel, and serves as Simulation Officer for the Anesthesia department. She also leads simulation drills internationally, to improve teamwork and patient safety in underserved areas. She is Co-PI for the “OR Black Box” project getting underway to simultaneously record patient physiologic data and staff language and behavior, in an effort to identify team best practices and areas for improvement.

An Associate Professor of Anesthesia, Dr Pian-Smith has received numerous teaching and patient safety awards, including the “2016 Cy Hopkins Patient Safety Leadership Award” of MGH. She is a charter member of the prestigious FAER Academy of Education Mentors, and has served on the Study Section to review education research grants funded through FAER. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation (APSF).

Dr. Marc Pimentel is a Medical Director in the Department of Quality and Safety and primarily works on the Hospital Acquired Conditions Reduction program. Following his anesthesiology residency at BWH, he completed the two-year HMS Fellowship in Patient Safety and Quality. He continues to practice as an attending anesthesiologist in the BWH operating rooms, while also serving as the Associate Clinical Director for Quality in the Department of Anesthesiology. Current projects include prevention of central line infections and catheter-associated urinary tract infections, and improving hand hygiene.

Dr. Sequist is the Chief Quality and Safety Officer at Partners HealthCare and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, with joint appointments in the Division of General Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Sequist’s research interests include ambulatory quality measurement and improvement and health policy issues affecting care for Native Americans.

Dr. Ryan Thompson is a general internist at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). He sees outpatients at MGH Internal Medicine Associates, and inpatients as part of the Complex Care and Bigelow Teaching Services. Dr. Thompson currently serves as the Medical Director of Care Continuum and Complex Care for MGH and the Mass General Physicians Organization (MGPO). In this role he oversees care transitions and admission/readmission avoidance programs across the hospital, including the MGH Home Hospital and Stay Connected Programs. He also serves as the director of the inpatient McGovern and Complex Care Services in the MGH Department of Medicine. He also co-founded and co-directs the annual Health Policy Course for Partners Graduate Medical Education. He earned his medical degree from the University of Utah, and completed his internal medicine residency training at MGH, followed by a year as chief resident. He was the first graduate of the Fellowship in Health Policy and Management in the MGPO, during which he earned a Masters of Public Health degree from Harvard.

Dr. Paige Wickner is a Medical Director for Quality and Safety at Brigham Health with a focus on patient experience, risk and safety. She completed her medical school degree at Dartmouth Medical School, and internship at Brown’s Rhode Island Hospital. She then went on to complete her internal medicine training at Yale New Haven Hospital, where she stayed and completed an Allergy and Immunology Fellowship. During her Allergy and Immunology fellowship she did a Masters in Public Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Wickner participates in research, clinical and quality projects examining drug allergy listings and their implications for patient quality and safety. She is also actively engaged in research using data to improve the patient experience. Dr. Wickner sees inpatient and outpatient Allergy and Immunology patients at BWH.