Henry A. Pitt, MD, has been appointed Chief Quality Officer for Temple University Health System (TUHS), and Associate Vice Dean for Clinical Affairs and Professor (Adjunct) of Surgery at Temple University School of Medicine (TUSM). Prior to joining Temple, Dr. Pitt served as Chief Quality Officer at Indiana University Hospital in Indianapolis.
As Chief Quality Officer for TUHS, Dr. Pitt will provide leadership for the attainment of targeted goals of the University Health Consortium (UHC) Quality and Accountability Scorecard, and those of multiple medical and surgical specialties. He will have the responsibility to expand the American College of Surgeons – National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS-NSQIP) throughout the healthcare enterprise. Dr. Pitt will have overall responsibility for the collection and analysis of quality data for all Temple Health providers, as well as to develop a system-wide quality scorecard to align all physicians, nurses and other clinical staff and administrative personnel with respect to quality outcomes, access and lower costs.
Dr. Pitt earned his medical degree from Cornell Medical College in 1971, and subsequently completed his residency training in general surgery at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, in Baltimore, MD, also serving as a Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Navy. Board-certified in surgery, he developed his expertise in hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgery and the study of gallstone pathogenesis while holding appointments at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and The Johns Hopkins University and Hospital. He previously was Vice Chair of the Department of Surgery at Johns Hopkins and Chairman of the Department of Surgery at the Medical College of Wisconsin.
He was appointed Chief Quality Officer at Indiana University Hospital in 2008. While there, he served as the surgeon champion for the ACS-NSQIP, achieving significant reductions in surgical-site infections and improvements in unplanned intubations. Dr. Pitt also developed Quality Improvement Teams which led dramatic improvements for the hospital in the UHC Quality and Accountability Scorecard.
At the national and international levels, Dr. Pitt has held leadership positions in a number of professional societies, including the Society of Clinical Surgery, the American Hepato-Pancreato-Biliary Association and the International Hepato-Pancreato-Biliary Association. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh; and has received honors from the James IV Fellowship, research societies in South Africa and Australia, and two medical colleges in China. He is on the editorial boards of numerous professional journals, and his research has been published extensively in major peer-review journals.