Podcasts · Keynotes · Speaking
Dr. Jeanne Huddleston, MD, MS
Hospitalist, industrial engineer and patient safety researcher
Dr. Huddleston has practiced as a hospitalist for more than 30 years and designed the Mayo Clinic 100% Mortality Review System. She speaks to healthcare audiences about why quality improvement projects stall and what the work needs in order to finish.
- Co-Founder, CEO and CISO, HB Healthcare Safety, SBC
- Professor of Medicine and rotating consultant, Mayo Clinic
- Past President, Society of Hospital Medicine; Harvard Macy Scholar
For hosts and organizers
Why your audience will want to hear her
Still practicing at the bedside
Dr. Huddleston has been a hospitalist for more than 30 years, starting as Mayo Clinic's first hospitalist. Her examples come from patient care.
She named the Messy Middle
Her term for the missing structure between a hospital leadership decision and a change in bedside work. Listeners recognize it from their own organizations.
She reviewed every in-hospital death
Starting in 2003, she led Mayo Clinic's review of every in-hospital death for nearly twelve years and trained each reviewer herself. The findings were published in the Journal of Patient Safety in 2014.
A physician with an engineering degree
She holds a Master's in Industrial Engineering and a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, and applies both to healthcare quality.
Works for any healthcare audience
Frontline nurses, hospital administrators and patient advocates each get an explanation they can use. Her style is direct, evidence-based and empathetic.
Keynotes around the world
Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Sri Lanka, the United Kingdom and the United States, among others. She is also an NSF-funded researcher.
Talk and episode topics
Conversations ready to book
Each topic works as a podcast episode, a keynote or a panel contribution. Pick a topic, then name it when you book your discussion.
“If the care’s not good enough for your loved one, it’s not good enough for anybody else’s either.”
The Loved One Lens: The Question That Finds What Standard-of-Care Review Cannot
Standard review asks whether care met the standard. In the Loved One Lens, reviewers picture the patient as the person closest in age and gender to their own loved one, then read the story of the care. Anything they would not want to happen to that loved one is an opportunity for improvement. Dr. Huddleston explains how this surfaces opportunities that review against the standard of care does not.
Why 90% of QI Projects Stall Before They Improve Anything, and the Operating System Gap That Explains It
Quality improvement teams received tools for thirty years but never an operating system for using them. Dr. Huddleston shows where projects stop between identifying a problem and sustaining an improvement.
What More Than Two Decades of Reviewing Every Death at a Major Academic Medical Center Taught Me That No One Is Teaching QI Teams
The patterns that repeated across the Mayo Clinic mortality reviews, and why standard case review often produces data without insight.
The Gap Between What Hospital Leadership Decides and What Reaches the Bedside, and Why It Is a Systems Engineering Problem, Not a Communication Problem
Drawing on her work as a frontline hospitalist and as Founding Medical Director of the Mayo Clinic Healthcare Systems Engineering Program, she explains what connects leadership intent to frontline workflow.
How Industrial Engineering Principles Are Transforming the Administrative Burden of Quality Improvement Case Review
Manual case review takes about 60 minutes per mortality case and about 90 per readmission case before any improvement action begins. She describes how industrial engineering reduces that time and standardizes the output.
Why Healthcare Quality Improvement Has Taught Tools for 30 Years but Never Taught an Operating System, and What Happens When It Finally Does
Her QI Operating System™ framework: the structural elements missing from standard QI training, and what changes in organizations that teach them alongside the tools.
Empowering Healthcare Stakeholders to Bridge the Leadership-Frontline Gap
For patients, loved ones, nurses, doctors, pharmacists and anyone who works in healthcare. Dr. Huddleston gives audiences phrases they can use and questions they can ask, so that each person has a way to contribute to safer care.
Ways to book
Formats
Podcast guest
Single episodes on any topic above.
Keynote
Conference and health system keynotes.
Short-form talk
Focused talks, including TED-style formats.
Panel or webinar
Moderated discussions and live sessions.
Media interview
Print, broadcast and online outlets.
About
Background
Dr. Jeanne Huddleston, MD, MS, FACP, FHM is a practicing internal medicine hospitalist, industrial engineer and patient safety researcher. As Mayo Clinic's first hospitalist, she later designed its 100% Mortality Review System. She led it for nearly twelve years and trained every reviewer using a standardized seven-step process she originated, published in the Journal of Patient Safety in 2014.
She returned to school to earn a Master's of Science in Industrial Engineering, a Certificate of Statistics and a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt. She then co-founded two organizations: HB Healthcare Safety, an AHRQ-listed Patient Safety Organization that helps hospitals learn from deaths and other adverse outcomes, and Influence Ignited!, where she teaches her QI Operating System™ curriculum to frontline team members and QI professionals.
She is a past President of the Society of Hospital Medicine, a Harvard Macy Scholar and an NSF-funded researcher, and she has published in Annals of Internal Medicine, Journal of Patient Safety and Journal of Hospital Medicine, among others.
Press kit
Everything a producer needs
Short bio
Dr. Jeanne Huddleston, MD, MS, FACP, FHM, is a practicing hospitalist, industrial engineer and patient safety researcher. She designed and led the Mayo Clinic 100% Mortality Review System, is a past President of the Society of Hospital Medicine, and co-founded HB Healthcare Safety, an AHRQ-listed Patient Safety Organization. She has delivered keynote addresses internationally.
Credentials
- Professor of Medicine and rotating consultant, Mayo Clinic
- MD, Michigan State University; internal medicine training, Mayo Clinic
- Founding Medical Director, Mayo Clinic Healthcare Systems Engineering Program
- Past President, Society of Hospital Medicine
- MS, Industrial Engineering; Lean Six Sigma Black Belt
- Co-Founder, HB Healthcare Safety, an AHRQ-listed Patient Safety Organization
- Co-Founder, Influence Ignited!
Watch and listen
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Address
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