Professional Affiliation

M.D., Chief Scientific Officer, National Quality Forum

Expert Bio

Helen Burstin, MD, MPH, FACP is the Chief Scientific Officer of The National Quality Forum, a not-for-profit membership organization that works to catalyze healthcare improvement through quality measurement and reporting.  Prior to her appointment as Chief Scientific Officer, Burstin served as the Senior Vice President for Performance Measurement since joining NQF in 2007.  In her role,  Burstin provides strategic guidance to all NQF work from the perspective of current and emerging measurement science.  She provides scientific oversight for the evaluation, endorsement and selection of quality measures and the transition to electronic performance measurement. Prior to joining NQF, Burstin was the Director of the Center for Primary Care, Prevention, and Clinical Partnerships at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).  Prior to joining AHRQ, Dr. Burstin was an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School and the Director of Quality Measurement at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.  She chaired the Quality Measures Workgroup of the Health IT Policy Committee.  She was recently selected as a 2015-2016 Baldrige executive fellow.  Burstin is the author of more than 80 articles and book chapters on quality, safety and disparities. She is a professorial lecturer in the Department of Health Policy at George Washington University School of Public Health and a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at George Washington University where she serves as a preceptor in internal medicine.  She was awarded the Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Voluntary Attending Award from the George Washington School of Medicine.