John R. Combes, MD

Senior Fellow, HRET
President and COO
Center for Healthcare Governance

Dr. Combes is a past chair of the National Coordinating Council on Medication Error Reporting and Prevention (NCC MERP) and serves as a member of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s Patient Safety Research Coordinating Center (AHRQ-PSRCC) Steering Committee. He is also a member of the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative. Currently, Dr. Combes serves on the boards of the Hospital Sisters Health System, a 13-hospital health system in Illinois and Wisconsin and the West Virginia Medical Institute, a multi-state Quality Improvement Organization. He has experience implementing process redesign at multiple hospitals. Dr. Combes’ research focuses on leadership and quality, patient safety, and clinical performance improvement. Dr. Combes recently led a team of quality and governance experts to complete the Quality Curriculum for Trustees, which is designed to increase board member knowledge of the quality imperative. The curriculum addresses the high cost of organizational and process variability and the importance of removing waste and eliminating defects to improve quality, safety and efficiency. Dr. Combes served as principal investigator on the AHRQ-funded Hospital-Based Palliative Care Consortium, which sought to improve and advance hospital-based end-of-life services. He also led the AHRQ task order, Reducing Hospital Associated Infections. He has experience conducting multi-method, multi-site research studies, and teaches the business case section of the HRET Patient Safety Leadership Fellowship.