Helen Macfie, Pharm.D., FABC

Helen Macfie is first a daughter, mom, sister, and friend. She lost her Dad to a medical error due to a surgical lapse and failure to rescue in 2005 and saw first-hand the aftermath and impact on her Mum and family. Her passion in healthcare is the attainment of the safest and highest quality care for every patient and family, in pursuit of the Quintuple Aim for healthcare.

Helen’s 40+ year healthcare career started in a variety of roles as a clinical pharmacist, then pharmacy leadership, and evolving to oversight for Quality, Safety, and Performance Improvement. For the past 20 years, she served as Chief Transformation Officer for a health system serving over 1 million patients with four hospitals and over 250 sites of ambulatory care where her position was responsible for performance improvement and safety, strategic planning, and complicated system redesign and deployment.

Helen has been named as one of the Top 50 Patient Safety Experts Leading the Field and Top Transformation Officers by Becker’s Hospital Review. She has served on numerous Boards and advisory panels for quality and safety and is currently serving as Faculty for the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) and on the National Steering Committee for Patient Safety. A focus of her work nationally in the US has been to contribute to the development of action plans around patient and workforce safety and wellbeing, advancing equity, and reducing “non-value-added waste”.

She has direct experience with implementing, hardwiring, and sustaining change, and sharing the positive impact these advances can make.
Helen received her Pharm.D. degree from the University of California, San Francisco, and her Fellow certifications from The Advisory Board and from IHI.