Yael K. Heher, MD, MPH, FRCP(C) Joins Beth Israel Lahey Health as Inaugural Chief Quality Officer
Cambridge, MA - Yael K. Heher, MD, MPH, FRCP(C) has joined Beth Israel Lahey Health (BILH) as the system’s first Chief Quality Officer. In this newly created executive position, Dr. Heher will lead the BILH system’s strategy for quality and safety.
“Dr. Heher’s experience as a national and international leader in quality and safety and a pioneer in the field of pathology will help strengthen our culture of safety at BILH,” said Rob Fields, MD, Executive Vice President and Chief Clinical Officer, BILH. “Dr. Heher will oversee a multidisciplinary, integrated approach to quality and safety across the system, and we are delighted to welcome her back to BILH in this new role.”
“Sir William Osler observed that the practice of medicine offers ‘countless opportunities to comfort and help the [sick], and to raise up those that fall,’” said Dr. Heher. “I am honored to return to BILH as an ally to our outstanding care teams as we raise our patients up and fulfill our BILH mission.”
Most recently, Dr. Heher served as the Associate Chief of Pathology Quality and Safety and Head of Renal Pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital and as Vice Chair, Quality and Safety for Mass General Brigham (MGB) Enterprise Lab Service, where she led the formation of a new MGB system-wide quality and safety division focused on diagnostic error.
Prior to her role at MGB, Dr. Heher led quality and safety in pathology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC). During her time at BIDMC, she designed and implemented a framework for the multidisciplinary review of safety events which focused on risk, outcomes, systems hazards, and human factors. These guidelines have been widely adopted nationally and internationally as best practice.
Dr. Heher is widely published and a prominent national and international speaker. She has received numerous accolades and honors from peers and students for her leadership in pathology quality and safety. Dr. Heher is fellowship trained in renal pathology at Harvard Medical School and was part of the first cohort of HMS fellows in quality and safety. She received her medical degree and completed her residency training at McGill University (located on Promenade Sir William Osler) in Montréal, Québec and her MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health.
About Beth Israel Lahey Health
Beth Israel Lahey Health is a health care system that brings together academic medical centers and teaching hospitals, community and specialty hospitals, more than 4,700 physicians and 39,000 employees in a shared mission to expand access to great care and advance the science and practice of medicine through groundbreaking research and education.
