About Carol Barsky
Carol L. Barsky, MD, MBA, is a physician executive, healthcare quality leader, emergency physician, and educator with over two decades of leadership experience across academic health systems, in clinical operations, disaster management, patient safety, and healthcare improvement. Throughout her career, she has focused on helping large organizations deliver care that is safer, more effective, more efficient, more equitable, and more responsive to patients' needs.
Currently, Dr. Barsky is a Professor in the Practice of Health Policy and Clinical Practice at The Dartmouth Institute at Geisel School of Medicine and teaches in the Master of Health Administration program. From 2021 through 2026 she served as Chief Quality and Value Officer at Dartmouth Health, overseeing clinical quality, patient safety, performance improvement, infection prevention, patient experience, and system-wide value initiatives across a multi-hospital system. She led an integrated quality strategy that created unified scorecards and measurable improvements, including reductions in inpatient mortality and hospital-acquired infections, established physician leadership programs training specialists to lead improvement within their disciplines, and strengthened board oversight of quality and safety.
In her prior position at Hackensack Meridian Health in New Jersey, Dr. Barsky served as Executive Vice President and Chief Quality Officer, where she designed and led quality strategies that contributed to the national rise of the medical center’s quality rankings, including its placement on the U.S. News & World Report Honor Roll. Before that, at Yale New Haven Health, she served as Medical Director for Clinical Performance and Associate Chief, Patient Safety and Quality, expanding her focus from emergency medicine operations to health system quality, patient safety, and performance improvement. There, she created and led the Medical Directors Leadership Council, a clinical and operations improvement group of physicians from every specialty.
Dr. Carol Barsky built her early career in emergency medicine and healthcare operations in New York City. As Director of Clinical Operations and Vice Chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, she was among the few women leading large-scale disaster management for a major U.S. health system. She co-led disaster operations during the September 11, 2001, attacks and later directed responses to the anthrax outbreak, the 2003 New York City blackout, and preparedness for the 2004 Republican National Convention. As chair of emergency medicine at St. Vincent’s Hospital and Medical Center in New York City, she continued to hone her expertise in physician-led emergency department operations, patient flow, and disaster preparedness.
An educator and mentor throughout her career, Dr. Barsky has held faculty appointments at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine, Yale School of Medicine, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine. Her contributions to patient safety and healthcare quality have earned national recognition, including selection by Becker's Hospital Review as one of the nation's “50 Experts Leading the Field of Patient Safety” for three consecutive years, as well as recognition by the United Hospital Fund for excellence in healthcare leadership. She has also served as a contributor, advisor, and expert panel participant for the National Academy of Medicine, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement.
Dr. Barsky holds a Medical Degree from the Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine and an MBA from the Yale School of Management. She completed an internship at St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York City and an emergency medicine residency at Jacobi Medical Center/Albert Einstein College of Medicine.