CHA Names Maren Batalden Chief Quality Officer
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA), an academic community health system serving Cambridge, Somerville and Boston's metro-north region, named Maren Batalden, MD, MPH, as its new Chief Quality Officer (CQO). Dr. Batalden has been at CHA for more than 16 years and previously served as associate chief quality officer before assuming interim CQO responsibilities in November 2019. She is focused on sustaining a culture of improvement at CHA that produces safe, high quality and compassionate care.
Dr. Batalden has responsibility and oversight for all quality, risk management, performance improvement and patient safety activities across the health system. The CQO also oversees and coordinates all hospital efforts to monitor and maintain compliance with all regulatory, state, federal, and Joint Commission requirements.
“Quality and safety are top priorities at CHA, and Dr. Batalden is passionate about the roles both play in producing exceptional care,” said CHA CEO Assaad Sayah, MD, “Over the last several years, she has provided leadership for improvement projects focused on inpatient care, care transitions and cross-continuum population health for patients with chronic disease.”
Most recently, as part of CHA’s response to COVID-19, Dr. Batalden provided critical leadership to help build inpatient capacity, apply evidence-based and data-driven solutions, develop modeling, and establish policies and protocols to ensure CHA delivered quality care to patients and communities.
She created and continues to direct the CHA-Gold Innovation Fellowship Program, which provides a platform for CHA clinicians and leaders to grow their skills in improvement science and institutional change management. Dr. Batladen’s past roles at CHA have included director of medical management, Accountable Care Organization, associate director of Graduate Medical Education for Quality and Safety, and associate program Director of the CHA Internal Medicine Residency. She is clinically active as a hospitalist and has represented the CHA medical staff as a member of CHA’s Board of Trustees.
Dr. Batladen is a national authority on using the lens of co-production to create effective partnerships between patients and care teams.
She completed her undergraduate education at St. Olaf College in Minnesota and earned a master’s degree in public health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She graduated from Harvard Medical School (HMS) and completed an internal medicine residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She is an assistant professor of medicine at HMS, where she teaches quality, safety and systems improvement.