Dr. Lyn Quintos-Alagheband is a pediatric critical care physician, educator, and healthcare leader. With over 20 years of experience in clinical and operational leadership and expertise in Quality Improvement and Patient Safety science, she has significantly improved patient outcomes and healthcare systems. As the Chief Quality Officer for children’s services at NYU Langone Health, she has played a fundamental role alongside a dedicated leadership team in advancing the institution’s position as one of the top academic medical centers in the United States for Quality and Patient Safety.
Dr. Quintos-Alagheband’s passion for quality and safety began during her clinical work in pediatric critical care, where she witnessed firsthand the complexities of delivering care in high-stakes situations. Her deep curiosity about science, mainly how the human body functions, led her to pursue medicine, with pediatrics as a natural choice. She found that children’s resilience and honesty in the face of health challenges inspired her, and it was in pediatric critical care that she developed a passion for improving individual patient care and entire systems. This drive for systemic improvement led her to pursue formal training in Quality Improvement and eventually take on leadership roles focused on high reliability leadership and improving healthcare delivery.
Dr. Quintos-Alagheband’s commitment to enhancing healthcare quality is evident in her leadership of innovative initiatives like the Key Card Change Program. By leveraging Lean-Six Sigma process improvement methodologies, the Key Card Change Program empowers patients and families to participate actively in their care, significantly improving clinical outcomes and preventing hospital-acquired conditions. The Key Card program has been adopted by other institutions as a. model for enhancing patient engagement in safety across various platforms and healthcare settings. In addition, she leads interprofessional teams in designing and implementing a portfolio of initiatives aimed at improving hospital processes, optimizing resource utilization, and enhancing patient safety. Her work has led to substantial improvements in clinical effectiveness and has contributed to reducing preventable hospital-acquired conditions in her organization.
As an educator, she is a key member of the founding curriculum team for the NYU Grossman Long Island School of Medicine (NYUGLISOM). She led the design and implementation of the Health Systems Science (HSS) curriculum for NYUGLISOM, the first standalone tuition-free accelerated medical school program in the US for over 100 years. A Black Belt in Lean-Six Sigma operating excellence, she considers equipping others with QI skills, as the way to ensure continuous learning and improvement that persist beyond any single initiative. She was a driving force behind the creation of the organization-wide Performance Improvement Science Academy (PISA) at her institution. Under her leadership as Director, the academy met its goal to build leadership capability and capacity in quality improvement and patient safety science at the macro and mesosystem levels. Likewise, under a federal grant award, she served as principal investigator to develop a learning collaborative with the US territories to empower local teams with QI skills and tools, to improve Chronic Kidney Disease prevention in patients with Diabetes,using the Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes (ECHO) model.
Dr. Quintos-Alagheband has also played a leadership role in patient safety at both regional and national level . She currently serves as a designated Regional Culture Subject Matter Expert for the Children’s Hospitals Solutions for Patient Safety network in North America and Chair to the New York State Department of Health Pediatric Sepsis Advisory Committee. She has been invited to speak at regional and international conferences on cutting-edge topics such as high reliability science principles, engaging patients and families in patient safety, building QI leadership capability, and using robust process improvement (RPI) methodology to drive healthcare transformation.
Dr. Quintos-Alagheband’s Filipino heritage has played a significant role in shaping her leadership style. Growing up in a Filipino household with five siblings and non-medical parents, she was encouraged by her parents to pursue medicine as a career. This sense of duty and resilience deeply ingrained in Filipino culture has shaped her approach to leadership. She credits her upbringing for instilling the values of collaboration, empathy, and compassion, all of which are integral to her work as a healthcare leader.
Her Filipino roots also play a crucial role in her efforts to give back to the community. She is currently collaborating with a team of dedicated healthcare leaders in the Philippines to help transform the healthcare system. This collaboration has led to the birth of the Institute for Advancing Care Transformation (i-ACT), the first institute in the Philippines established to focus exclusively and comprehensively on healthcare systems transformation. It is founded on four pillars which includes: Quality Improvement and Patient Safety, Innovation and Implementation Science Research, Person-Centeredness and Service and Advocacy. By bridging global best practices with local innovation, she strives to help shape a healthcare system that better serves Filipinos and benefits both the patients and the providers.
Dr. Quintos-Alagheband’s advice to aspiring Filipino healthcare professionals who want to pursue leadership roles in quality and safety is to start by building a strong foundation in clinical care. She emphasizes the importance of understanding the realities of patient care and gaining a deep appreciation for the complexities of healthcare systems. As a leader, she believes collaboration is key. Authentic leadership, she says, is not about authority, true expertise comes often from those closest to the work. It is essential to listen to frontline staff, patients, and families to gain valuable insights to making healthcare safer and better for all.
Her message to the global Filipino community about leadership and service is clear: It is about uplifting and empowering people, co-creating solutions, and shaping a healthcare system that better serves both the patient and our healthcare providers. Dr. Quintos-Alagheband’s journey from a pediatric critical care physician to a recognized leader in quality improvement and patient safety is a testament to her dedication, innovation, and passion for transforming healthcare. She is passionate about improving patient outcomes and shaping the future of healthcare leadership, ensuring that the systems we rely on are safer, more reliable, more effective and person-centered.
