The Joint Commission announces the appointment of Edward Pollak, MD, as medical director and patient safety officer, Division of Healthcare Improvement, and Andrew C. Bland, MD, MBA, FAAP, FACP, as medical director, Division of Healthcare Quality Evaluation. Both appointments were effective January 2.

Pollak’s primary responsibility at The Joint Commission is to promote performance improvement and patient safety initiatives. He reports to Ana Pujols McKee, MD, executive vice president and chief medical officer, The Joint Commission.

Pollak’s responsibilities include providing oversight and medical expertise to the Office of Quality and Patient Safety, which reviews and responds to reports of patient safety events at accredited and certified health care organizations. He provides oversight for the interpretation of clinical accreditation standards and leads the Patient Safety Advisory Group, a panel of external health care industry experts, to identify emerging patient safety issues and advise on the development of National Patient Safety Goals, Sentinel Event Alerts and accreditation standards.

“We are excited about the future under Dr. Pollak’s leadership and how he will inspire health care organizations to excel,” said Pujols McKee. “While he was patient safety officer at William Beaumont Hospital Royal Oak, Dr. Pollak helped lead the hospital to consistent top performance in patient safety and quality improvement by championing a robust safety culture. This is exactly the type of success we want to inspire other organizations to achieve.”

Pollak most recently served as vice chief of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine at William Beaumont Hospital Royal Oak, and associate professor at Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine, Royal Oak, Michigan. A practicing board-certified anesthesiologist, he has achieved advanced certification in perioperative echocardiography and also published and presented nationally on perioperative quality, safety and service. His postgraduate work includes patient safety officer training at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and root cause analysis training at ECRI Institute.

Pollak received his medical degree from the University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, and completed his residency in anesthesiology at the University of Michigan Medical Center, Ann Arbor. In addition to his medical background, Pollak holds a master’s degree in philosophy from Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he wrote his thesis on ethics.

In his new role, Bland reports to David W. Baker, MD, MPH, FACP, executive vice president, Division of Health Care Quality Evaluation, The Joint Commission.

Bland’s primary responsibilities at The Joint Commission include leading annual strategic planning to engage national stakeholders, identifying key quality and safety improvement targets, and selecting strategies such as standards, survey methods, measures and publications to address them. He also will promote the scientific integrity of standards, survey methods, and performance measures by directing literature reviews, leading technical advisory panels, and developing rationale statements explaining the evidence for requirements in accreditation and certification programs. Bland also leads efforts to identify best practices and quality improvement tools for meeting new standards and performance measure requirements.           

“The Joint Commission and our accredited and certified organizations will benefit from the expertise Dr. Bland is bringing to his new post,” Baker said. “He was instrumental in quality improvement efforts at the multi-hospital system where he previously worked. His training in analytics, combined with his experience as a clinician and administrator, will assist The Joint Commission in advancing the development of relevant, evidence-based standards and measures.”

Most recently, Bland served as system chief quality officer at Hospital Sisters Health System, a multi-hospital system in Illinois and Wisconsin. He is board-certified by the American Board of Medicine, in nephrology and internal medicine, and by the American Board of Pediatrics.

Bland received his medical degree from the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria, in Illinois, and completed his residency in combined internal medicine and pediatrics at OSF Saint Francis Medical Center, Peoria, Illinois. Bland received a master’s in business administration degree from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and will complete a master’s in predictive analytics degree in March at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois.

For more information about The Joint Commission visit www.jointcommission.org.