OUR BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Karen Moore, RN, MS, CHE - Board Chairman
Janet Bean, MBA
James B. Conway
Janet Nally Barnes
John A. Fromson, MD
Lucian Leape, MD
Susan LaFarge, Psy.D.
Dorothy Upson McCabe, RN, MS, M.Ed.
Paul R. Mordarski, Esq.
Tom Wolfe , MSW, LICSW
Marten van Pelt
Linda K. Kenney - President, Executive Director
Winifred N. Tobin - Communications Director
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Karen Moore, RN, MS, FACHE Chair
Karen Moore is currently the CEO at Kindred Hospital Parkview, Springfield, Massachusetts. Prior to that, she was the Vice President, Hospital Operations, at Baystate Franklin Medical Center in Greenfield, MA. Karen has been a senior health care executive and nurse for 30 years. She graduated from Boston State College with her BSN and completed a Masters in Nursing Administration at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Ms. Moore’s experience is distinguished by her commitment to patient safety, quality, and supportive work environments. She received the Massachusetts Hospital Association Leadership Award for her efforts in partnering with hospitals to create a voluntary compact of excellence with the Patients First Initiative. Ms. Moore also received the Mary B. Conceision Award for Nursing Leadership in 2007 and a 2007 Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Karen is also the Past President of the Massachusetts Organization of Nurse Executives and Fellow in the American College of Health Care Executives. She has been a member of the MITSS Board since 2005.
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Janet Bean, MBA
Janet Bean is a Business Support Manager within the Bank of America Technology & Operations division. She has been employed at Bank of America and its predecessors for more than 15 years. Prior to that Janet was an Information Systems manager with a technology company.
Janet graduated with a BA in Math & Economics from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, and earned an MBA from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts.
Janet resides in Walpole, Massachusetts, with her husband, Garry and is active as an active volunteer for the Walpole Food Pantry.
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James B. Conway
Jim Conway is Senior Vice President at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement [IHI] after having served as senior fellow from 2005-2006. From 1995-2005, he was Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of DFCI. Prior to joining Dana-Farber, he had a 27-year career at Children’s Hospital, Boston in Radiology Administration, Finance, and as Assistant Hospital Director for Patient Care Services. His areas of expertise and interest include governance and executive leadership, patient safety, change management, and patient-/ family-centered care.
He holds a Master of Science degree from Lesley College, Cambridge, MA and has received their Community Service Award. An Adjunct Faculty member at the Harvard School of Public Health, Jim is the 2001 winner of the first Individual Leadership Award in Patient Safety by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) and the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA). A Diplomat of the American College of Healthcare Executives, he received their 1999 Massachusetts Regents Award as Healthcare Executive of the Year. He is a member of the IOM Committee on Identifying and Preventing Medication Errors, is an Officer for the Massachusetts Coalition for the Prevention of Medical Errors, a member of the Clinical Issues Advisory Council of the Massachusetts Hospital Association, a Distinguished Advisor to the National Patient Safety Foundation, and a past member of the Joint Commission Sentinel Event Alert Advisory Group. Board commitments include: board chair, The Partnership for Healthcare Excellence; board member, Medically Induced Trauma Support Services (MITSS); board member, Health Research and Education Trust (HRET); board member NICHQ and Board of Advisors, American Cancer Society, New England Region. In government service, he is a member of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Quality and Cost Council.
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Janet Nally Barnes, R.N., J.D.
Janet Nally Barnes is a nurse attorney and the Executive Director of Clinical Compliance and Risk Management at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA. In this role, her responsibilities include directing the hospital’s clinical compliance programs as well as the clinical risk management programs at the Hospital, providing advice and support to senior management, medical, nursing and professional staff. Ms. Barnes previously practiced for nine years as an attorney specializing in medical malpractice defense litigation and spent twelve years as a nurse in pediatric critical care. Ms. Barnes received her diploma in nursing from Massachusetts General Hospital School of Nursing. She graduated from St. Anselm’s College in Manchester, NH with a Bachelor’s Degree in Nursing and she received her Juris Doctor from Suffolk University Law School. She is past President of the Massachusetts Society for Healthcare Risk Management. Ms. Barnes has lectured locally and nationally on varied risk management, patient safety and legal topics important to today’s healthcare providers.
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John A. Fromson, MD
John A. Fromson is chairman of the department of psychiatry at MetroWest Medical Center (MWMC), the largest full-service community teaching hospital system between Worcester and Boston, Massachusetts. He is responsible for overseeing all psychiatric administrative, quality, patient safety, credentialing, educational, and clinical activities. Patient care areas include adult, child-adolescent, and geriatric inpatient units, partial hospital program, and consultation liaison services. The department leads the hospital in fulfillment of patient safety goals and was recently recognized by the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health for its successful patient safety initiatives.
In March of 2007, the department was one of 50 nationally to be selected as an approved site for Beta testing of the new Joint Commission psychiatry core measure set. The department has also been asked to be one of 32 hospital psychiatry departments nationwide to participate in the NIMH-funded Mental Health QI Fit Study conducted by Tufts University School of Medicine and UCLA. MWMC and the department are also a Beta test site for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine Guidelines for Competency-Based Hospital Credentialing that Doctor Fromson helped to develop as a member of the Board’s Expert Panel on Credentialing.
Doctor Fromson’s primary clinical and research activities have centered on issues relating to physician and medical student health, professional development, and patient safety. He was the founding director, served as president, and is currently on the board of Physician Health Services, the primary program in Massachusetts that has become a national model in the prevention, identification, referral to treatment, and monitoring of physicians and medical students with substance use disorders, mental health issues, and physical illness. He is the immediate past chair of the American Psychiatric Association’s Committee on Physician Health, Illness and Impairment, is co-chair of the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry’s Committee on Physician Health, and is a past president of the Federation of State Physician Health Programs. He is the physician editor of the New England Journal of Medicine’s online CareerCenter Resource Center.
Doctor Fromson is also the immediate past president of the Massachusetts Coalition for the Prevention of Medical Errors. Initiated in 1997 as one of the first coalitions of its kind in the country, it is a statewide collaborative effort to improve patient safety and minimize medical errors. He chaired its Restraint Consensus Group that developed the first statewide best practices for creating restraint-free environments in hospitals, long term care, and psychiatric facilities. He has been a member of the MITSS board since 2004.
For his work in the areas of patient safety and physician and medical student health, Doctor Fromson is the recipient of the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society’s 2008 Outstanding Psychiatrist Award for Advancement of the Profession. He is certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology in psychiatry, child psychiatry, and addiction psychiatry. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and Fellow of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Doctor Fromson is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and received the Harvard Medical School Excellence in Tutoring Award for the academic year 2007.
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Susan LaFarge, Psy.D.
Susan LaFarge (slafarge@mitss.org) received her Doctoral degree in clinical psychology at the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology in June of 2004. Dr. LaFarge attended The University of Massachusetts at Amherst for her B.S. in Psychology. Throughout her graduate training she worked with a variety of populations including chronic mentally adults, underprivileged children and families in a community mental health center, and with adolescents in an urban middle school. Dr. LaFarge has worked with adolescents in a court clinic setting. Prior to graduate school, Dr. LaFarge worked for many years with abused and neglected infants and toddlers and their families as a direct caregiver. She later served as Assistant Director of the Parents' Center at Saltonstall House in Boston. Throughout her life, both personally and professionally, Dr. LaFarge has had an increasing interest in two main areas: the strength of mind-body connection and the empowerment of the disenfranchised. Dr. LaFarge serves as a clinical consultant to MITSS, and she provides the intake coordination and facilitates the patient and family educational support groups.
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Lucian L. Leape, MD
Lucian Leape is an Adjunct Professor of Health Policy in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health. Prior to joining the faculty at Harvard in 1988, he was Professor of Surgery and Chief of Pediatric Surgery at Tufts University School of Medicine. He has been an outspoken advocate of the nonpunitive systems approach to the prevention of medical errors and the need to make patient safety a national priority. Dr. Leape was one of the founders of the National Patient Safety Foundation, the Massachusetts Coalition for the Prevention of Medical Error, and the Harvard Kennedy School Executive Session on Medical Error. He was a member of the Institute of Medicine's Quality of Care in America Committee, which published 'To Err is Human' in 1999 and 'Crossing the Quality Chasm' in 2001. He has published over 100 papers on quality of care and patient safety. In 2004, he received the John Eisenberg Patient Safety Award from the JCAHO and National Quality Forum, and Modern Healthcare named him as one of the 100 most powerful people in health care.
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Dorothy Upson McCabe, RN, MS, M.Ed.
Dorothy currently serves as the Director of Nursing and Career Services at the Massachusetts Nurses' Association. In this capacity, she acts as a consultant in the areas of practice, standards of care, guidelines for safe nursing practice, career advisement, and regulatory issues that impact the nurse in the workplace. Dorothy is an experienced nurse educator and manager, having worked for many years in the areas of quality improvement and education of registered nurses in the acute care setting.
Dorothy received a Masters Degree in Medical-Surgical Nursing from Boston University, a Masters of Education in Counseling from Rhode Island College, and a Bachelor of Science Degree in Nursing from Boston College. She is a board member for the Massachusetts Coalition for the Prevention of Medical Errors, Advisory Board for Boston Works.com, and Quinsigamond Community College. Dorothy is also a member of the Massachusetts Nurses' Association and Sigma Theta Tau, the International Honor Society for Nurses.
Dorothy is an accomplished speaker, having presented nationally on a variety of subjects in the field of staff education, quality improvement, and management. Between 1998 and 1999 alone, she delivered 58 presentations on Medication Errors with a focus toward prevention.
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Paul R. Mordarski, Esq.
Paul R. Mordarski is a partner with the Boston law firm of Morrissey, Hawkins & Lynch. Paul received his law degree from the New England School of Law, graduating cum laude in 1992. He obtained two Bachelor of Science degrees from Boston College in 1989, one in Physics and a second in Mathematics. While at New England, Paul was awarded the New England Scholar Award for superior academic achievement. He joined Morrissey, Hawkins & Lynch in 1992, and he has served as President of the Mansfield Chapter of the Business Network International. Paul's areas of expertise include civil litigation, business planning, and construction law. He has been with MITSS since its inception and served as MITSS counsel in planning and setting up the non-profit corporation. Paul is the father of four children, and currently resides with his wife Kalana, in Mansfield, Massachusetts.
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Tom Wolfe, MSW, LICSW
A graduate of Cornell University and Boston College School of Social Work, Tom has worked in the EAP field for over 30 years. He is a Senior Account Manager and Clinical Associate for Sobel & Raciti Associates (LifeScope EAP). He has worked in a variety of clinical capacities for a number of hospitals (Waltham, Southwood Community, Mount Auburn) and was the director of EAP services at MetroWest Medical Center for 14 years. He has conducted many debriefing sessions following adverse events.
Tom is a 20+-year member of SWAN (Social Work Assistance Network), a voluntary colleague impairment sponsored by the Mass Chapter of NASW. He has spoken both regionally and nationally on the subject of impaired professionals. He was recently on the Board of Directors, and the Executive Committee of the Massachusetts Chapter of NASW, and he currently chairs the Personnel Committee.
To keep his life in balance, he coaches Masters Swimmers and swims competitively, is a goalkeeper in an Over the Hill soccer league, and as a 6 year cancer survivor (not initially diagnosed correctly), he will ride in the Pan-Mass Challenge for his 8th consecutive year.
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Marten van Pelt
Marten van Pelt is currently Marketing Director for the Communications & High Tech practice of Accenture, a $17B global business and technology consulting firm. As a member of the C&HT marketing leadership team, Marten is responsible for several areas including opportunity-centric marketing, where he focuses on working with the sales team in driving marketing efforts to help win major, $100M+ outsourcing relationships. In addition, Marten leads a team in developing and driving the C&HT practice’s client-centric marketing efforts. Finally, Marten is also responsible for the interactive and outsourcing marketing teams.
Marten has enjoyed a distinguished and multi-faceted career in marketing, advertising, product and business development, working with various Fortune 500 companies. He holds an MBA from the London Business School and a B.A. from Syracuse University.
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Linda Kenney
President / Executive Director
Linda Kenney (lkenney@mitss.org)is an activist for patient, family and clinician rights, an educator and a public speaker on patient safety. Linda founded MITSS as the result of a personal experience with medical trauma, when she identified the need for support services in cases of adverse events and outlined agenda for change. She is currently involved in extensive outreach regarding the need for and availability of MITSS services, speaking at various forums on the topic, providing therapeutic groups for patients and family members, and enlisting the participation of various medical disciplines. She also oversees the day-to-day operation of the non-profit corporation in an administrative capacity.
Ms. Kenney serves on the Boards of the Massachusetts Coalition for the Prevention of Medical Errors and Consumers Advancing Patient Safety, and is a member of the Planning Committee for 2006 NPSF Congress. Her article, "To Err is Human; The Need for Trauma Support Is, Too; A Story of the Power of Patient/Physician Partnership After a Sentinel Event", co-written with colleague Frederick van Pelt, was published in the January/February 2005 edition of the Journal of Patient Safety and Quality Healthcare.
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Winifred N. Tobin
Communications Director
Winifred N. Tobin (wtobin@mitss.org) joined MITSS in the winter of 2003 as the Director of Fundraising, concentrating her efforts on marketing and event planning. Winnie received her Bachelor of Science in Business Administration Degree, with a Concentration in Marketing, Magna Cum Laude from the Suffolk University School of Management in Boston, Massachusetts. She also received a Certificate in Paralegal Studies from Northeastern University. She was employed for ten years as a paralegal at the law firm of Snyder and Sweeney among whose specialties included health care law. She was also employed by the law firm of Powers and Hall as the assistant to a senior trial attorney specializing in medical malpractice defense litigation. More recently, she worked as a paralegal with the law firm of Tobin & Tobin, P.C. Winnie is a strong advocate for patient safety and is passionately committed to furthering the MITSS mission of "Supporting Healing and Restoring Hope" to all those impacted by medical errors and adverse outcomes.
