10/28/19

The Department of Quality and Safety is thrilled to welcome Andrew Resnick, MD, MBA, our new chief quality officer and senior vice president at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Andrew joins us from his prior role as chief medical officer of Froedtert Hospital, where he served as associate dean of Clinical Affairs Adult Practice and associate professor of General Surgery at the Medical College of Wisconsin. Additionally, he previously served as chief quality officer at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. For this post, we asked Andrew to share how he became interested in quality and safety, why he feels the field is important and the vision he has for his new role.

I consider my personal entry into the administrative side of medicine to be unique. As a surgical intern at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania I quickly noticed there were many opportunities, both large and small, for improvement across the work I was doing. For example, there was a constant pressure to send patients home from the hospital early in the day, a task that may sound simple. Yet there were often lab tests and results we would have to wait for before patients could leave. I was fortunate enough to join a committee that recognized this problem and focused on making the system more efficient. Improvements made by this committee resulted in patients getting to go home earlier and more sick patients being able to receive care, a win-win. This was my first true experience in quality-related work and it ignited my career interests from that point forward.

While hospitals are measured against many nationally-imposed guidelines as part of our work, for me the meaning of Quality and Safety goes far beyond the data. My top priority is making sure patients receive the best care possible. To accomplish this, I recognize it is critical to involve, and learn from, front line staff when redesigning our systems and optimizing the quality of care delivered to patients. I learned this well as an intern and have never forgotten. In my new role, I look forward to engaging with the diverse Brigham Health community on what it believes are opportunities for improvement and how we can work together to accomplish system-wide change.

Growing up in the Boston area, this is a homecoming for me and my family. I look forward to sharing the challenges of this work with our providers and patients.