Center for Healthcare Delivery Science Team

Jennifer P. Stevens is the Director of the Center for Healthcare Delivery Science, a pulmonary and critical care physician, and an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School. Her area of investigation focuses on how, and why, we deliver the medical care we do and understanding how we can improve it. As a leader in the field of healthcare delivery science, Dr. Stevens directs this hospital-wide research group that builds and studies healthcare system innovations that provide what patients need, want and value. Her most recent research has investigated a range of healthcare delivery topics including: the opioid epidemic in ICUs across the country; the mortality benefit of inpatient physicians knowing their patients; and new ways to identify when our ICUs are strained to the point of patient harm. Dr. Stevens' work has been featured in, among others, the Washington Post, NPR, and the front page of the Boston Globe. She is also the co-author of Understanding Healthcare Delivery Science, a textbook recently published by McGraw-Hill.

Bruce E. Landon is Professor of Health Care Policy and Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a primary care physician at Health Care Associates at BIDMC. Dr. Landon's primary research interest has been assessing the impact of different characteristics of physicians and health care organizations, ranging from health plans to physician group practices, on physician behavior and the provision of health care services. His work in this area has included the development of a theoretical model to explain how health care organizations affect the quality of care. Dr. Landon has been particularly interested in studying organizational approaches to improving the quality of care. A study of his found that collaboratives improved the processes of care for chronic medical conditions, but not the outcomes. He is also interested in larger organizational entities, such as managed care health plans, and has studied quality of care and patient experiences in Medicare's managed care program. In addition, Dr. Landon's research interests include payment reform, and he has been involved in studying both global payment strategies, such as Medicare's Accountable Care Organization programs, and payment systems for primary care.

Steven Horng is an emergency medicine physician, Clinical Lead for Machine Learning at the Center for Healthcare Delivery Science, Associate Program Director of the ACGME Multi-disciplinary Fellowship in Clinical Informatics at BIDMC, and Instructor in Emergency Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Horng is dual board-certified in emergency medicine and clinical informatics with degrees in computer science and biomedical informatics. He specializes in translational clinical informatics and focuses his research on novel methods of artificial intelligence to improve the quality and efficiency of clinical care. Specifically, he works on applying state-of-the-art machine learning methods to automate clinical processes and extract insight from electronic medical records.

Timothy Anderson is a general internist in the Division of General Medicine at BIDMC, Lead for Improving Value in Healthcare at the Center for Healthcare Delivery Science and an Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Anderson is a primary care physician and health services researcher focused on identifying strategies to improve the quality and safety of health care delivered to adults with chronic conditions, with an emphasis on improving care delivery during transitions of care and reducing the delivery of low-value prescribing and testing. His research employs a range of advanced observational study designs to improve our understanding of how care is currently delivered and evaluate how policies and innovations in care delivery impact patient outcomes.

Chloe Zera is the Director of Network Obstetric Population Health and a maternal-fetal medicine specialist in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at BIDMC, Equity Lead at the Center for Healthcare Delivery Science, and an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Harvard Medical School. Her research focuses on understanding systems of care, reducing disparities and improving outcomes. Dr. Zera's leadership includes roles at Massachusetts ACOG, the Perinatal-Neonatal Quality Improvement Network (PNQIN) of Massachusetts, and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine. She also leads the "Beyond Birth" project at Ariadne Labs, which is focused on improving the transition from obstetrics to primary care after complex pregnancies.

Karla J. Pollick is the Administrative Director of the Center for Healthcare Delivery Science, responsible for program and financial management with an emphasis on research funding and resource development. She works closely with the Center's Director to set strategic direction for and operationalize the Center's programs in support of developing the field of healthcare delivery science at BIDMC. In this capacity she is responsible for establishing the Center as an operational unit committed to training and supporting healthcare delivery scientists and the development, study and spread of healthcare delivery innovations locally, regionally and nationally. As Administrative Director, Ms. Pollick is also responsible for InSIGHT Core, a shared resource for clinical faculty and staff in need of data for research or quality improvement projects.

Catherine L. Annas is a Senior Project Manager at the Center for Healthcare Delivery Science, working on several Center projects as well as Center-led initiatives. Project management includes rigorous attention to project deliverables and milestones, assisting clinical project leads in their oversight and delivery of project goals, coordinating the work of project teams, and drafting written reports on project outcomes.

Tenzin Dechen, is a Biostatistician I at the Center for Healthcare Delivery Science, assisting in statistical programming for various research projects to generate data and insights and support improved healthcare delivery and outcomes. Biostatisticians are involved in organizing, cleaning, merging, and manipulating complex datasets from different data sources. They work closely with investigators and senior biostatisticians to determine the correct statistical testing to be performed in each analysis, assist in interpreting and understanding study results, and prepare tables and figures suitable for presentation and publication.

Emma M. Lee is a Quality Research Analyst at the Center for Healthcare Delivery Science, serving as a key member of the Center’s research team. Quality Research Analysts perform data management and quality control procedures for research projects, collaborate with program staff on the design and analysis of research protocols, and analyze data for research studies.

Stephanie Li is a Decision Support Specialist II at the Center for Healthcare Delivery Science’s InSIGHT Core. Decision Support Specialists serve as expert resources on data quality providing technical, analytic and reporting services by developing customized databases which use the many and complex data repositories available based on each project’s unique needs. Decision Support Specialists work closely with researchers, project teams, clinicians and outside organizations on various research, quality improvement or operational projects conducted throughout the Center.

Melissa Manolis is the Administrative Manager at the Center in addition to her role as the Administrative Manager at the Harvard Medical School Fellowship in Patient Safety and Quality. The responsibilities of the Center's Administrative Manager include tracking progress and facilitating meetings for the InSIGHT Core team, which develops customized databases to assist researchers and quality improvement teams. The Administrative Manager also provides support to the Center's Innovation Grant and Travel Grant programs, and helps coordinate Center conferences and Core Faculty events.

Ashley O'Donoghue is an economist and Research Fellow at the Center for Healthcare Delivery Science, specializing in quasi-experimental designs and econometric techniques for causal inference. Healthcare economics includes working with highly granular electronic health record data to answer questions related to health care delivery and innovation evaluation and constructing mathematical models to understand complex, real-world problems.

Atulita Punnamaraju is a Clinical Research Student at the Center for Healthcare Delivery Science. Clinical Research Students assist with various Center research projects. Their responsibilities include data entry, organization, and researching literature on current project topics. They work closely with investigators, core faculty, and clinicians to support them with diverse research projects. Ms. Punnamaraju is currently pursuing her Master's degree at Boston University Graduate School of Medical Sciences and hopes to pursue a career in medicine and public health.

George S. Silva is a Decision Support Specialist II at the Center for Healthcare Delivery Science's InSIGHT Core, assisting researchers and quality improvement teams in the use of BIDMC's clinical data repositories. This work includes the creation of large, high-complexity cohorts as well as data extraction to support analyses for grant applications and publications. Decision Support Specialists work closely with researchers, project teams, clinicians, and outside organizations on various research, quality improvement, or operational projects conducted throughout the Center.

Noa Talmor is a clinical research student for the Center for Healthcare Delivery Science. She is currently a senior at Northeastern University, studying finance and following a pre-med track. Research student responsibilities include data management and organization for a number of center projects. Research students work closely with the Center leadership team, Core Faculty, and other clinicians leading research projects.

Patricia H. Folcarelli is the Vice President of Patient Safety at CRICO, the insurance program for all of the Harvard medical institutions and their affiliates. She is also a Lecturer on Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Folcarelli's research activity includes advancing the practice of respect in healthcare, evaluating the impact of hospital apology and resolution programs, understanding how we should measure the safety of care, and reducing the risk of harm to ICU patients. She has served on the board of the Massachusetts Coalition for the Prevention of Medical Errors; was board chair of the Medically Induced Trauma Support Services (MITSS) and is the Past President of the Massachusetts Society for Healthcare Risk Management). Pat currently serves on the Quality Committee of the board for Mercy, a health system based in St. Louis, Missouri and on the Quality and Safety Board Subcommittee for Baystate Health in Massachusetts.

Alexa Boer Kimball is President and Chief Executive Officer of Harvard Medical Faculty Physicians at BIDMC, and a Professor of Dermatology at Harvard Medical School. She is also President of the Beth Israel Deaconess Care Organization (BIDCO) Physician LLC, which maintains a membership of approximately 2,500 physicians. Dr. Kimball has published over 275 papers, is the author of the book 100 Questions and Answers about Psoriasis, which has been translated into Spanish, Greek, and Korean, and is the editor of Dermatologic Diseases and Cumulative Life Course Impairment. Dr. Kimball is widely recognized for her research on physician workforce economics, quality of life, and outcomes, for which she was awarded the American Skin Association Research Award for Health Policy and Medical Education and the Mass General Hospital Bowditch Prize for increasing quality of care while reducing costs. She has served on multiple non-profit Boards, including the Society for Investigative Dermatology, where she was elected Vice President; the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy; and the Hidradenitis Suppurativa Foundation. Dr. Kimball also served as President of the International Psoriasis Council.

Lawrence J. Markson is Vice President for BILH IT Systems Services, EHR-Ambulatory and WebOMR. He is responsible for leading teams that maintain webOMR, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center's self-developed EHR; and the teams that support ambulatory care across BILH. He joined BIDMC in 1998 and held a number of positions before he was promoted to Vice President of Clinical Information Systems and Chief Medical Information Officer. He also served as interim IT leader for BIDMC for a year before assuming his current BILH position. Dr. Markson helped launch the web version of OMR, which has a long history of innovation and was one of the first systems to allow patients to view their results and later read their own notes. He also has a longstanding interest in business intelligence and led the early development of BIDMC's clinical data warehouse and performance reporting system.

Marsha Maurer is the Senior Vice President for Patient Care Services and Chief Nursing Officer at BIDMC. Her responsibilities include oversight for all acute care based clinical sites, as well as professional and service support departments. Ms. Maurer leads highly committed professionals who play a critical role in the hospital's work to ensure the highest-quality, and safest care for patients. A strong advocate of professional nursing leadership, Ms. Maurer has supported nurses in the pursuit of advanced degrees, and research and publication in journals such as the American Academy of Critical Care Nurses, and the Journal of Nursing Administration, among others. The BIDMC nursing service has been recognized with multiple podium presentations at the American Organization of Nurse Executives, the American Organization of Operating Room Nurses, and other leading national nursing organizations. In addition to her leadership role at BIDMC, Ms. Maurer is a past board member of the Organization of Nurse Leaders of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Connecticut.

Daniel Talmor is Chair of the Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care, and Pain Medicine at BIDMC and the Edward Lowenstein Professor of Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School. Prior to becoming chair, he was the Vice Chair for Critical Care Medicine at BIDMC. Dr. Talmor's clinical interests focus on the prevention and treatment of ARDS as well as mechanical ventilation in the ICU. Dr. Talmor's research interests are centered on the early identification and treatment of critically ill patients, with a particular focus on the optimal delivery of mechanical ventilation. He has held multiple grants from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the National Institutes of Health and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

Richard Whyte is the Vice Chair for Clinical Affairs, Quality and Safety for the Department of Surgery at BIDMC and a Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Whyte's responsibilities at BIDMC include improving the standardization of care practices for the Department of Surgery. This work involves overseeing the development of standardized order sets and clinical care pathways, as well as overseeing and participating in a number of discrete quality improvement projects — many of which involve communication, prioritization, resource allocation, and quality measurement. Dr. Whyte's research interests include bioethical issues pertaining to the field of surgery - particularly cardiothoracic surgery, and disclosure and transparency in the surgeon-patient relationship. Dr. Whyte has served in various governing capacities of national professional organizations, including serving on Standard and Ethics and Patient Safety Committees of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons and as Governor of the American College of Chest Physicians (Northern California). Dr. Whyte currently serves on the Ethics Committee of the American College of Surgeons.

Timothy Anderson is a general internist in the Division of General Medicine at BIDMC, Lead for Improving Value in Healthcare at the Center for Healthcare Delivery Science and an Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Anderson is a primary care physician and health services researcher focused on identifying strategies to improve the quality and safety of health care delivered to adults with chronic conditions, with an emphasis on improving care delivery during transitions of care and reducing the delivery of low-value prescribing and testing. His research employs a range of advanced observational study designs to improve our understanding of how care is currently delivered and evaluate how policies and innovations in care delivery impact patient outcomes.

Gabriel A. Brat is an Associate Surgeon in the Department of Surgery at BIDMC and an Assistant Professor of Surgery and Instructor in Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Brat has a broad research focus on informatics tools to improve surgical outcomes. His interests include clinical decision support to optimize surgical opioid prescribing as well as leveraging large-scale database and machine learning models to inform surgical planning and management. He teaches a yearly health IT innovation course at Harvard Medical School and is heavily involved in digital health mentorship in the Boston doctor-entrepreneur community.

Michael N. Cocchi is an intensivist and emergency medicine physician, Associate Chief Medical Director at BIDMC, Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and the Associate Director of the Center for Resuscitation Science at BIDMC. His research interests have primarily focused on critical care topics, in particular cardiac arrest, sepsis, and shock. He is currently the Principal Investigator of a Phase II clinical trial studying the effects of esmolol in septic shock, funded by the American Heart Association. Most recently, he published the results of a study exploring targeted interventions during daily ICU rounds to improve communication and patient safety. A unifying theme of Dr. Cocchi's clinical, research, and administrative work is improving the delivery of safe and high quality care to critically ill patients in the pre-hospital, ED, and ICU settings, in order to achieve improved outcomes for these most vulnerable patients.

Lauren Doctoroff is a hospitalist and the Medical Director for Utilization Management at BIDMC and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Doctoroff's clinical responsibilities include hospitalist work on a teaching and a non-teaching service at BIDMC. As the Medical Director for Utilization Management, she chairs the Utilization Review Committee, and leads multiple initiatives on hospital utilization and complex patient management. Dr. Doctoroff's academic interests include transitions in care and post-discharge care, and prolonged hospitalizations. She has published on post-discharge care and prolonged hospitalizations in the American Journal of Medicine, the Journal of Hospital Medicine, and Journal of General Internal Medicine, and has spoken locally and nationally on topics of transitions of care and post discharge care, as well as patient flow. She recently received her MBA from the Heller School at Brandeis.

Shoshana J. Herzig is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director of Hospital Medicine Research in the Division of General Medicine and Primary Care at BIDMC. Dr. Herzig's research focuses broadly on outcomes of care in hospitalized patients, and specifically on medication safety and the interplay between medication decisions and adverse outcomes in the hospital setting. She has a strong track record of both federal and foundation funding to support this work, and has received national attention for several publications in high impact journals including JAMA and the Annals of Internal Medicine. Dr. Herzig is a Senior Deputy Editor at the Journal of Hospital Medicine. She has practiced clinically as a hospitalist at BIDMC for the last decade, with active involvement in resident and medical student education, serving as the Robinson Firm Chief – a prominent teaching role in the medicine residency program.

Cullen D. Jackson is the Director of Innovation in the Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine at BIDMC, and an Instructor in Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Jackson works on identifying and implementing methods for improving quality and patient safety in the healthcare environment. His research currently focuses on applying cognitive science and human factors engineering theories and methods to challenges in the surgical setting with particular focus on individual, team, and system performance assessment and augmentation, including simulation-based training. Prior to joining BIDMC, Dr. Jackson led various defense-related research and development efforts to design systems and techniques for measuring the impact of technology on operator performance for training and technology evaluation, and for conveying information to aid in decision-making.

Anna C. Johansson is the Director of Social Science Research in the Division of Translational Research in the Department of Medicine at BIDMC, an Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Johansson's research focus is developing and testing explanatory models of team structure and decision making using quantitative and qualitative research methods, with a specific interest to assess the degree to which the social structure, namely status hierarchies, of healthcare teams impacts diagnostic and treatment decisions, and patient outcomes. This work has focused primarily on the emergent and complex scenarios often encountered in the ICU setting and replicated in high-fidelity simulation training. Her evolving research interests now combine the theoretical and methodological research on status hierarchies with methods of EEG analysis to understand the neurocognitive basis for the processes that create hierarchies and performance outcomes. Dr. Johansson is also a Vice Chair for the BIDMC Institutional Review Board (IRB), the Program Director for IRB Navigation and Scientific Review Program.

Jason Maley is a pulmonary and critical care physician, Associate Director of the Medical Intensive Care Units and Director of Quality for the Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Division at BIDMC, and Instructor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. His work focuses on healthcare delivery in the setting of acute critical illness and recovery after critical illness and respiratory illnesses. Dr. Maley is also the director of the BIDMC Critical Illness and COVID-19 Survivorship Program, which is a comprehensive clinical and research program aimed at helping patients with lasting sequelae of acute illness. He conducts mixed-methods research to understand long-term patient and family outcomes, and identify opportunities for improved healthcare delivery in these clinical settings. Dr. Maley is also a collaborator with the MIT Laboratory for Computational Physiology on projects examining collaborative data science applications in the setting of critical illness.

Ashley O'Donoghue is an economist and Research Fellow at the Center for Healthcare Delivery Science, specializing in quasi-experimental designs and econometric techniques for causal inference. Healthcare economics includes working with highly granular electronic health record data to answer questions related to health care delivery and innovation evaluation and constructing mathematical models to understand complex, real-world problems.

James V. Rawson is Senior Medical Director of Diagnostic Radiology at BIDMC, Lead for Applied Engineering and Creating Value in Clinical Operations at the Center for Healthcare Delivery Science, and a Senior Lecturer on Radiology at Harvard Medical School. He is a health services researcher interested in the intersection of process improvement, health policy and health system redesign. Dr. Rawson served as Chair of the Department of Radiology and Imaging at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University for 17 years. During that time, he pioneered patient- and family-centered care in radiology by including patients on Radiology equipment installations and other renovation projects resulting in a patient experience designed by patients. He has used and taught process improvement and change management to improve clinical capacity, access and throughput for patient care. Dr. Rawson also served as President of the Adult Medical Staff for three years, working on hospital metrics and accreditation. He is a member of the Board of Chancellors of the American College of Radiology and the President of the Board of Directors of the Association of University Radiologists. He was a member of the CMS APC Advisory Panel where he chaired the CMS Sub-committee on Packaging. Dr. Rawson also serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of the American College of Radiology and Academic Radiology.

Ammar Sarwar is an Assistant Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School and an interventional radiologist at BIDMC. Dr. Sarwar is a health services researcher investigating the intersection of costs and outcomes for diagnostic imaging and image-guided procedures in healthcare delivery. His current focus includes time-driven activity based costing for interventional radiology procedures, investigating access to interventional radiology services in the United States, and causes for variations in 30-day readmissions and mortality after interventional radiology procedures in the United States. Nationally, Dr. Sarwar serves as an alternate advisor to the AMA's CPT editorial committee, as a member of CMS' Medicare Evidence Development and Coverage Advisory Committee (MEDCAC), and as a member of CMS' MACRA Clinical Care Committee focusing on cost measurement.

Julius Yang is Senior Medical Director, Clinical Operation and Data Analytics of Health Care Quality for the Silverman Institute for Health Care Quality and Safety and Vice Chair of Clinical Affairs for the Department of Medicine at BIDMC. Dr. Yang works clinically as an academic hospitalist and is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He has an ongoing interest in the intersection of hospital operations, healthcare quality, and medical education and has worked to develop systems to promote hospital throughput and access while enhancing both quality of care for patients and educational opportunity for physician trainees. Dr. Yang's efforts are focused on enhancing the efficacy of interdisciplinary healthcare teams (with initial focus on physician-nurse microteams) through innovative staffing models, teamwork training, and application of the Relational Coordination improvement framework enabled through grant funding from the Lowenstein Foundation.

Chloe Zera is the Director of Network Obstetric Population Health and a maternal-fetal medicine specialist in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at BIDMC, Equity Lead at the Center for Healthcare Delivery Science, and an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Harvard Medical School. Her research focuses on understanding systems of care, reducing disparities and improving outcomes. Dr. Zera's leadership includes roles at Massachusetts ACOG, the Perinatal-Neonatal Quality Improvement Network (PNQIN) of Massachusetts, and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine. She also leads the "Beyond Birth" project at Ariadne Labs, which is focused on improving the transition from obstetrics to primary care after complex pregnancies.