Christopher Landrigan, MD

Chief, Division of General Pediatrics Boston Children’s Hospital

Dr. Landrigan is Chief of General Pediatrics at BCH, Director of the Sleep & Patient Safety Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the William Berenberg Professor of Pediatrics, and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He was a founding member of the Harvard Work Hours, Health & Safety Group, whose work has been a cornerstone in national changes in resident work hours; founding chair of the Pediatric Research in Inpatient Settings Network, the only funded research network for hospitalists in the country, which has attracted more than $50 million in research support and published over 500 peer-reviewed papers; a founder and Principal Investigator of the I-PASS Study Group; a founder of the I-PASS Patient Safety Institute.

Dr. Landrigan has led a series of groundbreaking studies on the epidemiology of medical errors and interventions designed to reduce their incidence. His most important work has been focused on developing reliable patient safety measurement tools and developing and implementing interventions to improve the safety of hospital care. His work on the relationship between resident work hours, sleep and patient safety contributed to national changes in resident work hour standards. Recently he led the development of I-PASS, a multi-faceted handoff & communication improvement program that AHRQ has described as the gold standard for safe handoffs of care; adapting it for use by physicians, nurses and other providers in a wide range of healthcare settings and implementing it. I-PASS has been adopted by pediatric & adult hospitals across the country.

Dr. Landrigan has authored over 200 publications in the medical literature & has received numerous awards for his research, teaching, leadership & innovation. In 2016, the I-PASS Study Group was the recipient of the most prestigious patient safety award in the country, the John M. Eisenberg Award for National Achievement in Patient Safety, from the Joint Commission & the National Quality Forum.

Robert Hanscom

Retired Vice President of Risk Management & Analytics COVERYS

Robert Hanscom, now a strategic advisor for I-PASS Institute, retired from his role as Vice President of Risk Management and Analytics at Coverys in September 2022. During his nine-year tenure at Coverys, he oversaw the company’s national risk management services, and led enterprise-wide initiatives to strengthen Coverys as a data-and-analytics driven organization. Included in those efforts was the development of Coverys’ comparative benchmarking database, which now houses the root-cause factors of approximately 30,000 deeply analyzed malpractice claims. His work has led to a proactive risk management model which focuses on using the evidence to find solutions before harm reaches the patient – rather than after. 
Prior to joining Coverys, Robert was with CRICO, the malpractice self-insurance captive for the Harvard system, for 14 years. At CRICO, he was Senior Vice President of Loss Prevention and Patient Safety and headed up CRICO’s external consulting division, CRICO Strategies. Previous to that, Robert was Vice President of Clinical Services at Lahey Clinic in Burlington, MA for a period of five years. Earlier in his career, Robert worked for both Massachusetts General Hospital and for a law practice in Maine. Robert received his B.A. in History from Pacific Union College (California) and his Juris Doctorate from Pepperdine University School of Law.

Pat Folcarelli

Vice President for Patient Safety CRICO

Pat Folcarelli RN, MA, PhD is Vice President for Patient Safety at CRICO the insurance captive for the 35 Harvard affiliated institutions. In her CRICO role Pat assists with strategic and operational patient safety solutions.  Pat is a part time lecturer in Medicine at HMS and for the past 4 years has co-directed a course on Patient and Family Engagement in Quality and Safety for the Masters in Healthcare Quality and Safety at Harvard Medical School.  

Prior to joining CRICO in 2020, Dr. Folcarelli worked at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) for more than 30 years, most recently as Vice President, Health Care Quality. Pat has worked in health care quality in leadership roles for 22 years. 

Pat received her BS in Nursing from Hunter College of the City University of NY and earned both her M.A. and Ph.D. from New York University. She serves on the Quality and Safety Board for Mercy, a health system in St. Louis, MO, and the Board Subcommittee for Quality and Safety Committee of Baystate Health. Pat serves as the Co-Chair of MACRMI (the Massachusetts Alliance for Communication and Resolution Following Medical Injury ) which recently became a part of the Betsy Lehman Center. She has also served on the Board of the Massachusetts Coalition for the Prevention of Medical Errors and is past Board Chair for MITTS (Medically Induced Trauma Support Services) and past President of the Massachusetts Society for Healthcare Risk Management.

Abraham Jacob, MD

Chief Quality Officer M Health Fairview

Abe Jacob, MD, MHA serves as Chief Quality Officer at M Health Fairview, a joint clinical enterprise of a large community health system (Fairview Health Services) and an academic medical center, the University of MN Medical Center/University of MN Masonic Children’s Hospital in Minneapolis, MN.  The health system has over 35,000 employees, 10 hospitals, post-acute care and over 70 clinics.   After practicing primary care in Internal Medicine/ Pediatrics for 7 years, Abe returned to the University of MN in 2005 to start the first Pediatric Hospitalist program in the Twin Cities area.   Abe became Chief Medical Officer at the University of MN Masonic Children’s Hospital from 2012-2018 where he led efforts to reduce preventable harm and implement a high reliability platform focused on patient safety which has now been adopted by the health system.  Abe was appointed Chief Quality Officer (CQO) for M Health Fairview in 2019.  In his role as CQO, he has oversight over patient and employee safety, regulatory, inpatient and outpatient quality, and infection prevention.  He has led efforts to reduce mortality, preventable harm and employee harm across the health system.  He continues to practice as an internist and pediatrician in primary care and as a hospitalist at the children’s hospital.  He has been married to his partner Christy for over 25 years. Together,  they have 7 children, ranging in age from 9-23 years of age.