Cancerwise

José Rivera is happiest outside of his comfort zone. That’s where the opportunities are, he recognizes. Whether it’s securing a college tennis scholarship that brought him to the U.S. from his native Mexico or helping transform MD Anderson’s quality and safety culture into one of the first true examples of high reliability in health care, Rivera thrives at identifying opportunities to reach new heights. 

He hopes his son and daughter are watching. 

“I want to leave a legacy for them in the same way I want to leave a legacy at MD Anderson,” Rivera says. “I tell them to get uncomfortable. Their path may not always be what they envision. Get uncomfortable and learn from it. That’s where the opportunities are.”

Challenging the status quo of patient safety

Rivera joined MD Anderson as our first chief administrative quality officer in 2020. At the time, MD Anderson had renewed its commitment to safety, making it one of the institution’s core values. In a pursuit to eliminate unintentional but serious preventable harm during patient care, Rivera tackled this stubborn status quo in health care: the unsupported belief that some harm is an unavoidable consequence of complex care. He used audits, metrics, dashboards and benchmarked data to understand the true state of quality and safety at MD Anderson. 

“What surprised me was how eager everyone here is to transform and get better,” Rivera says. “We aren’t satisfied with being No. 1 in cancer care. We want to achieve high reliability in medicine and, in many ways, we’re discovering every day how to do that.”

Six years in, a serious reduction in serious safety events

In 2022, MD Anderson launched Team Up for Safety, an effort based on the institution’s commitment to reducing serious safety events, eliminating preventable harm, and improving overall safety for our patients, caregivers and team members. Since then, Rivera has tracked data showing a more than 75% reduction in MD Anderson’s Serious Safety Event Rate (SSER). This volume-adjusted measure of preventable harm is calculated as the number of preventable serious safety events in the previous 12 months per 10,000 adjusted patient days for the same period. 

“It tells a story,” Rivera says. “It tells us where we started, which interventions have real impact, such as mandatory safety training for all employees, and just how much we can achieve together, which means sustaining our improvements.”

Rivera, who began his career as an industrial engineer, came to MD Anderson to make waves in quality and safety.  

“The data tells us we’re rowing in the same direction and making a meaningful impact on quality and safety in health care,” he says. “I want my children to understand that this is how I support our patients and our mission to end cancer. I want them to see that getting uncomfortable with the opportunities before you can lead to lasting impacts.”

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