Faculty and Staff

Our Team

Matthew M. Hutter, MD, MPH

Matthew M. Hutter, MD, MPH, is the medical director of the Codman Center at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is also a surgeon at Mass General who specializes in general and advanced laparoscopic surgery. Dr. Hutter received his master’s in public health from the Harvard School of Public Health Program in Clinical Effectiveness. His research focuses on surgical outcomes and quality of care. He works closely with fellows within the Department of Surgery to complete division-specific research projects that utilize the data and resources of the Codman Center. Dr. Hutter is the co-director of the Department of Surgery Quality and Safety Program.

Dr. Hutter is the co-chair of the Massachusetts Surgical Quality Collaborative, a state-wide surgical collaborative with the Massachusetts State Chapter of the American College of Surgeons (ACS) that shares data and identifies best practices. Dr. Hutter sits on several national society committees, including the Board of Governors for the Society of American Gastrointestinal Endoscopic Surgeons and the Healthcare Quality and Outcomes Committee for the Society for Surgery of the Alimentary Tract. He was recently elected a councilperson at large to the Executive Council for the American Society of Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery. Dr. Hutter is the architect of and continues to lead the ACS Bariatric Surgery Data Collection Program, which has now become the sole national bariatric surgery data collection program. He is the chair of the Committee to Develop a Quality Metric for Complex GI Surgery for the GI Intersociety Group, which comprises members of all the GI surgical societies that work towards developing a quality metric for complex GI surgery.

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David C. Chang, PhD, MPH, MBA

David C. Chang, PhD, MPH, MBA, is an associate professor of surgery at Mass General, Harvard Medical School, and directs outcomes research and research training at the Mass General Codman Center. Dr. Chang earned his PhD at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, after completing both his MBA and MPH at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Chang started his professional career with a primary appointment in the Department of Surgery at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, with a joint appointment in the Department of Health Policy and Management and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He then continued on to the University of California San Diego, where he was the director of outcomes research for the Department of Surgery. Dr. Chang is currently an editorial board member for Annals of Surgery and an ad hoc reviewer for JAMA Surgery, Journal of the American College of Surgeons, Neurosurgery, among others. He is also a member of AHRQ study section for health services research and NIH study section for surgical disparities research.

Dr. Chang is committed to bridging the gap between clinical surgery and public health. Dr. Chang has published more than 350 peer-reviewed original research articles and book chapters on various issues related to surgical outcomes research, disparity research, quality improvement and health policy issues, with an H index higher than 60. Dr. Chang was also a recipient of the A. Clifford Barger Excellence in Mentoring Award from Harvard Medical School for his mentorship of surgical residents and medical students and a Governor’s Award for Geriatric EMS for his quality improvement work on behalf of the state of Maryland.

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David M. Shahian, MD

David M. Shahian, MD, joined the Department of Surgery in May 2007. He currently serves as professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School, vice president of the Mass General Center for Quality and Safety and associate director of the Codman Center. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Medical School, Dr. Shahian trained in general surgery at Mass General and was a fellow in cardiothoracic surgery at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center in Chicago. For nearly two decades, Dr. Shahian was chair of the Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery at the Lahey Clinic.

In addition to his clinical career, Dr. Shahian has been involved in health policy issues for several decades, particularly in the areas of performance measurement and public reporting. He previously served as chair of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) Workforce on National Databases, and is currently chair of the STS Quality Measurement Task Force and the STS Council on Quality, Research, and Patient Safety, in which capacities he has led the development of STS risk models and performance measures. Dr. Shahian has been a leader in the implementation of the mandatory cardiac surgery public reporting initiative in Massachusetts and the voluntary, nationwide public reporting program established by the STS. He is the author or co-author of more than 225 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters in the areas of cardiothoracic surgery, risk modeling, performance measurement, public reporting and related health policy issues. Dr. Shahian received the 2017 Distinguished Service Award of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons.

Dr. Shahian is a member of the NQF Board of Directors and Executive Committee. He previously served as chair of the NQF Evidence Task Force and was a member of various NQF panels and steering committees. Dr. Shahian is a member of the PCPI Board of Directors and co-chair of the National Quality Registry Network. He serves as deputy editor of the Annals of Thoracic Surgery.

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Cameron Wright, MD

Cameron Wright, MD, graduated from the University of Michigan and the University of Michigan Medical School. He completed his residencies in surgery and thoracic surgery at Mass General and is board certified in both areas. Dr. Wright’s clinical focus is on thoracic oncology, airway surgery (tracheal surgery) and pulmonary thromboendarterectomy.

Dr. Wright sits on several boards and national society committees, including the American Board of Thoracic Surgery where he serves as director of the STS and as chair of the General Thoracic Database. His interest in quality and patient safety in surgery informs his role as chair of the Department of Surgery Quality Assurance Committee. Dr. Wright also serves as a colonel in the United Stated Army Reserve and has deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom.

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Donna Antonelli, BS, CPHQ

Donna Antonelli, BS, CPHQ, is the program director of the Mass General Codman Center. As part of the Department of Surgery Quality Program, she provides analytical, statistical and project management support for surgical outcomes reporting, research and quality improvement projects. Donna has more than three decades of experience in health care research, operations, quality measurement and project management. She has worked in various quality data management positions at Lahey Clinic, including the performance measurement analyst for clinical indicators. Donna also worked at UMass Memorial and the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, and as a private data management consultant to develop and utilize health care databases for quality improvement and research purposes. She has held research positions at UMass Medical School, University of Massachusetts Medical Center and Harvard School of Public Health and published articles on care coordination. Donna received a BS in neuroscience from the University of Rochester and is a Certified Professional in Healthcare Quality.

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Sarah Bird, BA

Sarah Bird, BA, is a data analyst at the Mass General Codman Center. She works with the faculty and staff on surgical quality data analytics, visualization and reporting. Sarah is working on the design and implementation of interactive Tableau reports and dashboards for different quality metrics for the Department of Surgery. Additionally she works to support clinical registry data collection efforts as well as Codman Center research projects. Prior to joining Mass General, Sarah worked as a research associate at Harvard Business School. Sarah has a BA from Amherst College.

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Lynn Devaney, RN, MSN

Lynn Devaney, RN, MSN, is a senior clinical nurse reviewer for the Codman Center and is the longest-serving member in the center. She brings many years of experience in the surgical/trauma intensive care unit at Mass General to her work in surgical outcomes. Along with her colleagues, she maintains the ACSNSQIP database and is involved in multiple projects around quality improvement and surgical research. Lynn previously developed and served as the brand manager for the Department of Surgery’s On-Call Program and its Morbidity and Mortality Conference, website and database. She has been the recipient of the Department of Surgery STAR Award and the Mass General Partners in Excellence Award and has published in the Association of Perioperative Registered Nurses. She has a BSN from Salve Regina College.

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Meridith E. Greene, PhD

Meridith E. Greene, PhD, is a research scientist at the Codman Center. She completed her doctoral dissertation at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. Her work focuses on modeling national clinical health data and patient-reported outcome measures as a means to understand patient risk factors for good and bad outcomes following treatment. Meridith has extensive experience managing international, multicenter outcomes studies as well as national linkage studies utilizing administrative data, clinical registries and patient-reported outcomes data. At the Codman Center, Meridith is responsible for managing the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute-funded initiatives. She works closely with faculty and staff conducting qualitative and quantitative analyses to nationally implement patient-reported outcome measures into the Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery Accreditation Quality Improvement Program.

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Kristen Hellmuth, RN, BSN

Kristen Hellmuth RN, BSN, is a surgical clinical reviewer for the Codman Center. To this role, she brings over 16 years of nursing in various emergency departments, urgent care centers and intravenous therapy settings. Her introduction to the Codman Center was through part-time work beginning in 2017, where she independently maintained the Endocrine Surgical Database. In 2019, Kristen joined the Codman Center full time, and now maintains the ACS Adult and Pediatric databases, working collaboratively with her colleagues to help improve patient care and surgical outcomes. Kristen received her BS in Nursing at Salem State College.

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Kathleen Swierzewski, RN

Kathleen Swierzewski, RN, is the quality and safety nurse for the Department of Surgery at Mass General. Kathleen is interested in projects that bring the work of quality and safety across the institution, championing solutions leading to improved patient care. She seeks to work collaboratively with nursing, residents and surgeons in a multidisciplinary setting. As one of the developers of a consistency check tool, she pursues her interest in consistent collection of high-quality data in both the adult NSQIP and MBSAQIP registries. Working as the quality and safety nurse, along with clinical abstraction, gives her a unique view to patient quality and safety leading to informed improvements in patient care. She brings broad clinical experience with more than 25 years of practice in surgical and cardiothoracic ICU settings. Prior registry experience includes the American College of Cardiology and the Society of Thoracic Surgeons databases.

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Sharon Woo, MS, MBA

Sharon Woo, MS, MBA, is a performance improvement project manager at the Codman Center where she provides project management support to quality and safety initiatives for the Department of Surgery. She facilities project teams using principal investigator frameworks for creating measurable and sustainable change. Prior to joining Mass General, Sharon worked in the Clinical Pathways/ERAS Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and as a clinical research coordinator at the Cleveland Clinic Cancer Center. Sharon received a BS in biochemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles and a MS and MBA from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.

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Quality Directors

Rich Ehrlichman, MD

Plastic Surgery

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Nahel Elias, MD

Transplant Surgery

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Michele A. Gadd, MD

Gastrointestinal and Oncologic Surgery

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Jeffrey Hajibandeh, MD, DDS

Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery

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Matthew M. Hutter, MD, MPH

Gastrointestinal and Oncologic Surgery

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Arminder Jassar, MD

Cardiac Surgery

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Haytham Kaafarani, MD, MPH

Trauma, Emergency Surgery and Surgical Critical Care

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Jarone Lee, MD, MPH

Critical Care and Emergency Medicine

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Peter T. Masiakos, MD

Pediatric Surgery

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John T. Schulz, III, MD, PhD

Burns Service

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Sunita Srivastava, MD

Vascular Surgery

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Cameron D. Wright, MD

Thoracic Surgery