Biography

Dr. Ezequiel Garcia Elorrio is one of the founders and board member of the Institute for Clinical Effectiveness and Health Policy (IECS) in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he also leads the Department of Health Care Quality and Patient Safety. IECS is an independent, non profit organization created by professionals from the medical and social sciences devoted to research, education and technical cooperation aiming to the improvement of efficiency, equity, quality and sustainability of heath care systems and policies. Dr. Garcia Elorrio obtained his Medical Degree from the University of Buenos Aires (1992) and he then specialized in Internal Medicine at CEMIC (Center for Medical Education and Clinical Investigation) (1993-1997). Following his interest in clinical and health services research he applied for a scholarship from the W.K: Kellogg Foundation Battle Creek MI, USA and attended the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston MA, USA, where he obtained the degree of Masters in Epidemiology (1997-1999). Back in Buenos Aires he attended the School of Business from Austral University where he earned a Master Degree in Business Administration, magna cum laude (2003-2004) looking for complementary training in Health Care Management. In the following year he obtained a PhD in Medicine from the University of Buenos Aires after successfully defending his doctoral thesis (high honors) entitled comparative evaluation of consumer satisfaction according to access to health care (2005). Dr. Garcia Elorrio is currently Associate Professor of Public Health at the School of Medicine of CEMIC and holds a teaching position in the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). He teaches courses of Introduction to public health for medical students, evidenced based medicine for Clinicians at CEMIC and health care quality in the Masters Program in Clinical Effectiveness from UBA. He is one of the core faculties from the previously mentioned Master’s Program, what has been carried out in collaboration with professors from the Harvard School of Public Health and has so far more than 350 graduates. He has lectured in several local and international forums in topics such as ambulatory care, epidemiology, biostatistics, health care management and health care quality. Among his research interests, the field of health care quality is the most treasured. He has done extensive work in adapting and validating instruments for assessing consumer experiences and satisfaction with the health care system applying its findings in several organizations in Argentina. He also collaborated in developing a panel of quality indicators for the evaluation of the quality of second level cardiovascular care. He belonged as a team leader to the network of researchers from the Global Health Productivity Project, Center for Health policy from Stanford University (Palo Alto, CA) dedicated to the comparative evaluation of health care systems among the participants countries. He has been recently involved in several projects to promote research and collaboration in health care quality with Yale University and Ottawa University. At this moment he is dedicated to consolidate a research group in different topics in health care quality in order to provide the Latin American region with best practices to improve health care services quality and to evaluate its impact when deployed. His work is reaching peer-reviewed journals through several publications. He is presently funded by Mapfre Foundation from Spain, WHO´s patient safety small grants program, PATH/USAID and mentoring a Fogarty (NIH) International Fellow. He has recently been appointed as one of the deputy editors of the ISQUA journal and he is also member of the recently launched initiative named CLICSS (Colaborative Latinoamerican Consortium in Quality and Safety). He has also been designated co-regional leader of IHI´s Open School initiative and convenor of the research section of the ISQUA Knowledge Portal. He still practices medicine in CEMIC; a private non-profit community hospital based in Buenos Aires as member of the department of medicine and where he has led its home health care service for seven years. He has also integrated the group for clinical effectiveness dedicated to disseminate knowledge in clinical epidemiology and quality improvement among the different levels of the organization. His professional activities are also dedicated to health care management and quality improvement in health plans. For ten years he worked for OMINT, a 43 years old private health insurer, where he developed and applied strategies to improve health care quality, designed new strategies for adequate preventive care, improved coordination of services for high risk patients through disease management programs and assessed consumer experience using validated instruments among several other activities. He also led the team that implemented the HEDIS measures set from the National Committee for Quality Assurance in OMINT`s quality improvement system, one of the few NCQA´s foreign projects. In the field of technical cooperation he has done work for the Cognitive Neurology Institute in Buenos Aires, PNUD (United Nations) in the province of Buenos Aires, the Global Forum in Peru, PATH/USAID in Ghana and Nicaragua, the World Bank/the National Minister of Health in Argentina and Catholic University/Minister of Health in Chile, SOLCA in Ecuador, PATH/USAID in Nicaragua and has helped several Hospitals in Argentina and the region in projects related to quality improvement and patient safety. During his career, Dr. Garcia Elorrio has been awarded with several scholarships that made possible his education from high school, to receive clinical training in the Baylor College of Medicine (Houston Tx) and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine (New York, NY), and to attend to the School of Public Health from Harvard University and the IAE School of Business from the Austral University. Recently he has been granted a scholarship from the Canadian Coalition for Global Health Research.