Patient safety veteran brings two decades of experience scaling safety programs, strengthening safety culture, and turning outcomes data into action
BOSTON, Mass. – August 26, 2026 – The I-PASS Patient Safety Institute today announced the appointment of Heather Reed, APTD, CPHQ as Vice President of Operations and Strategy. Reed brings more than 20 years of healthcare experience to the role, spanning patient safety culture, patient experience, clinical education and training, and strategic solution development. Reed joins at a moment of expansion for I-PASS, bringing the operational infrastructure needed to scale patient safety programs without sacrificing rigor.
Reed spent nearly 20 years at Press Ganey, a leading healthcare performance improvement company, most recently as Senior Director of the company's Patient Safety Organization (PSO). Under her leadership of the PSO, she grew membership from a handful of health systems to more than 200 institutions with over 5,000 facilities, building the largest patient safety database in the country with nearly 8 million reported safety events.
"The I-PASS solution makes it easy to do the right thing," said Reed. "It embeds structure into workflows that already exist, rather than asking clinicians to take on one more thing, making it exemplary for creating a shared mental model across care teams and entire health systems. When you pair that standardization with the depth of evidence behind I-PASS, the impact on reducing medical errors is powerful. That combination is rare, and it's exactly the kind of program I want to help grow."
At I-PASS, Reed will bring a strategic lens across operations and client-facing teams to help shape the company's next chapter, overseeing platform development and program management to increase value for current and future I-PASS partners.
"Heather has spent her career in service of making sure patients are safer because the systems around them work the way they're supposed to," said Marshall Burkhart, CPPS, CEO of I-PASS. "She has advised safety and quality leaders on culture, built education that helps change outcomes, and grown a safety solution to serve more than two hundred health systems. That combination of operational discipline and safety expertise is exactly what I-PASS needs at this stage of our growth."
To learn more about improving patient safety through optimal clinical care transitions, please contact info@ipassinstitute.com.
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About I-PASS
The I-PASS Patient Safety Institute enables structured communications during clinical care transitions, and as a result, improves both patient safety and clinical outcomes. Founded by clinicians in 2016, the I-PASS Institute leverages expert mentorship paired with technology and digital tools to scale the I-PASS methodology. I-PASS is currently implemented in more than 100 healthcare institutions across the continuum of care. Learn more at www.ipassinstitute.com.