APIC IPC Leadership Series Webinar with Joint Commission

Jonathan B. Perlin, M.D., Ph.D. became the seventh President and CEO of The Joint Commission on  March 1, 2022. Previously, as President, Clinical Operations and Chief Medical Officer, HCA Healthcare, Perlin led clinicians, data scientists and researchers in developing a learning health system model for improving care at the system’s 189 hospitals and 2,200 other locations. His team’s work achieved national recognition for preventing elective pre-term deliveries, reducing maternal mortality, using AI to improve sepsis survival, and developing public-private-academic partnerships for improving infection prevention and treating COVID. Perlin’s CHARGE consortium partnered HCA, AHRQ and academia created a reusable platform for accelerated research using real-world evidence from the care of over 400,000 COVID inpatients.

Before HCA, Dr. Perlin was Under Secretary for Health in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, where he led the Veterans Health Administration to national prominence for clinical performance. He is a Congressional Budget Office Health Advisor, immediate past chair the National Quality Forum and the VA Special Medical Advisory Group, and former MedPAC Commissioner. An elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, he has co-chaired Academy action collaboratives on 
digital health, combatting opioids and climate change. Board service includes Columbia University’s Health Policy and Management program, Vanderbilt University’s School of Engineering, and Perlin served as a Trustee of Meharry Medical College for 15 years. Perennially recognized as one of the most influential leaders in healthcare, Dr. Perlin maintains faculty appointments at Vanderbilt University as Clinical Professor of Medicine and Health Policy and at Virginia Commonwealth  University as Adjunct Professor of Health Administration. 

Sylvia Garcia-Houchins is a microbiologist and a nurse with over 35 years of experience in infection prevention and control.  For the last 5 years she has been the Director of Infection Prevention and Control for The Joint Commission.

Dr. Tiffany Wiksten has been a nurse for over 20 years and has worked as an infection preventionist for over 10 years. In her current role, she is an Associate Director in the Standards Interpretation Group and Infection Control Subject Matter expert at the Joint Commission. She has led infection prevention and control efforts in a variety of healthcare settings including large academic medical centers, a community medical center with associated long term care facilities as well as various ambulatory healthcare sites. She earned her Doctor of Nursing Practice in Transformational Leadership from Rush University and her Master of Science in Nursing from Loyola University with a focus on Population based infection control and environmental safety.