Laura Adams is the President and CEO of the Rhode Island Quality Institute (RIQI), a collaboration of the top leadership of health care stakeholders working together to transform the health care system in the state.  RIQI was the only organization in the nation to win all three of the major ARRA health IT awards.  The grants totaled $27M in federal grant funding to build an infrastructure to support health care transformation in the state.  The grants funded health information exchange, the RI Regional Extension Center and the RI Beacon Community.

Laura served on the Office of the National Coordinator’s Health IT Policy Committee’s Governance Panel for the Nationwide Health Information Network in 2010.  She is a past Chair of the Board of the National eHealth Collaborative (NeHC), initiated by former HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt.   Also in 2010, Laura chaired the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) Planning Committee for the “Digital Infrastructure for Population Health and a Learning Healthcare System” workshop series.

She is a faculty member of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) in Boston and has been since its inception.  She directed the IHI Idealized Design of the Intensive Care Unit project and served as faculty in the VHA’s 70-hospital ICU improvement collaborative, specializing in patient and family centered care.  She currently teaches clinical quality improvement system-wide for Sutter Health, based in Sacramento, CA. Laura led the governance consulting for the Improving Performance in Practice (IPIP) Initiative, a RWJF-funded collaborative initiative of the American Board of Medical Specialties, and the Boards and Societies of Internal Medicine, Family Physicians and Pediatrics.  

Laura was Founder, President and CEO of Decision Support Systems, a New York-based company specializing in Internet-based health care decision support.  She was among the first to bring the principles of healthcare quality improvement to the Middle East, in conjunction with Donald M. Berwick, MD and the Harvard Institute for Social and Economic Policy in the Middle East.  She traveled in the U.S. and Europe with Dr. W. Edwards Deming as a student in the study of statistical-based quality improvement.   

Her publications include co-authoring with Gustafson, et al, Developing and Testing a Model to Predict Outcomes of Organizational Change, Health Services Research, 38(2), 751-776 and  co-authoring Collaborating with Consumers to Advance Health Knowledge and Improve Practice in Herzlinger, R, Consumer-Driven Health Care:  Implications for Providers, Payers and Policymakers, 2004” She also co-authored “A Draft Framework for Measuring Progress Towards the Development of a National Health Information Infrastructure, BMC Medical Informatics Decision Making, June, 2005.   Laura co-authored “Improving comfort and communication in the ICU: a practical new tool for palliative care performance measurement and feedback”, Nelson, J., Mulkerin, C., Adams, L. and Pronovost, P.; Quality and Safety in Health Care, Aug 2006.  She co-authored with Peter Pronovost, MD, et.al. is The Rhode Island ICU Collaborative: A Model for Reducing Central line-associated Bloodstream Infection and Ventilator-associated Pneumonia Statewide, Quality and Safety in Health Care 2010;19:555-561.   Her most recent co-authored publication with M. Vigorito and B. Sexton is Collaborative Improvement in Sepsis Identification & Treatment, JQPS, Vol. 37, No. 11, Nov. 2011

Laura’s experience in healthcare at the senior management level included her position as Vice President of Patient Services at Parkview Episcopal Medical Center in Colorado and Assistant Administrator for the Universal Health Services’ New Orleans area hospitals. In 2007, she received a Congressional citation from Congressman Patrick Kennedy for her visionary leadership and contributions to improving the health care system in Rhode Island.  Laura also received University of Northern Colorado’s 2010 Distinguished Alumni award.