2015 Leaders in Health Care Awards: Outstanding Medical Director/Officer, Puget Sound Region

WINNER

J. Richard Goss, M.D.

Medical Director, Harborview Medical Center, Seattle

As medical director at harborview medical center for the past six and a half years, Dr. Rick Goss leads one of the core teaching hospitals in the University of Washington School of Medicine.

We are all better at what we do because of our teaching environment, says Goss, who also is the UW Medicine director for quality of metrics reporting as well as a UW professor of medicine and an associate dean at the medical school.

The Harborview system, with a workforce of thousands, operates a 413-bed hospital that handles 18,000 inpatients a year, an emergency department that treats 66,000 annually and 18 clinics that provide outpatient care to 246,000 people a year.

As a proponent of improved quality care, better patient safety and infection control, Goss believes in using metrics and national benchmarks to drive improvement. Weve achieved top-tier status with our patient safety measures while caring for some of the most challenging patient populations, he says. As we move forward, I see us collaborating, sharing successes … all on the same team.