Interview with a quality leader: Kate Goonan on performance excellence. Interview by Pamela K. Scarrow

Kathleen Jennison Goonan, MD, is Executive Director of the Mongan Institute for Health Policy, Center for Performance Excellence (CPE) at Massachusetts General Hospital. CPE guides transformational change in healthcare management and helps leaders, administrators, and practitioners in the healthcare workforce nationwide achieve and sustain performance excellence (http://www.mghcpe.org). An internist trained at the Massachusetts General Hospital, she has more than two decades' experience leading healthcare quality assessment and improvement initiatives. Before joining the CPE in 2002, she held a number of senior executive positions, including Senior Vice President of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. Dr. Goonan has served as a judge for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the Joint Commission's Codman Award, and for the American Hospital Association's McKesson Quest for Quality Award. She teaches extensively about achieving organizational performance excellence. Dr. Goonan co-authored Journey to Excellence: How the Baldrige Health Care Leaders Succeed, authored The Juran Prescription: Clinical Quality Management, and has written numerous articles and book chapters on performance improvement in healthcare. Dr. Goonan was faculty for the Harvard School of Public Health Leadership Development Program for Physicians from Academic Health Centers (1995-2007) and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (1999-2005).