Carla Pugh, MD, PhD, was appointed The Joint Commission's inaugural president's fellow for healthcare quality and safety.
"Establishing the [fellowship] is an exciting way to introduce fresh perspectives to The Joint Commission's efforts to support healthcare organizations' delivery of safe, high-quality, equitable and compassionate care," Jonathan Perlin, MD, PhD, president and CEO of the organization, said in a March 14 news release from the commission. "We are delighted Dr. Pugh has joined us as our inaugural fellow and look forward to working with her to advance quantitative methods of performance assessment and improvement."
Dr. Pugh, a professor of surgery at Stanford (Calif.) University's school of medicine, said she intends to use her yearlong fellowship to develop a technology-driven process that supports the commission's work and that helps health systems gauge performance, according to a March 14 news release from Stanford.
Dr. Pugh also serves as director of Palo Alto, Calif.-based Stanford Health Care's Technology Enabled Critical Improvement Center, a facility dedicated to the research of new performance metrics for surgical operations and procedures, according to the Stanford release.