Management Team
Eugene Litvak, PhD
is President and CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Optimization. He is also an Adjunct Professor in Operations Management in the Department of Health Policy & Management at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), where he teaches the course “Operations Management in Service Delivery Organizations”. Prior to his current position, he was a co-founder (with Michael C. Long, MD) and director of the Program for the Management of Variability in Health Care Delivery at the Boston University (BU) Health Policy Institute and a Professor at the BU School of Management. Before joining Boston University Dr. Litvak was a faculty member at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis.
He was the co-author of the innovative cost-effective protocols in screening for HIV and hepatitis, which reduce the cost of screening by a factor of 5 to 10 while simultaneously reducing errors by a factor of 20 to 40. These protocols have been positively evaluated by FDA, NIH and CDC, which were the subject of a large-scale international trial supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development as well as Chiron and Roche pharmaceutical companies. Dr. Litvak served as a Principal Investigator from the U.S. for this trial.
Dr. Litvak is an author of more than 60 publications in the areas of operations management in healthcare delivery organizations. He was the editor of The Joint Commission’s patient flow books “Managing Patient Flow in Hospitals: Strategies and Solutions”, 2nd Edition and “Optimizing Patient Flow: Advanced Strategies for Managing Variability to Enhance Access, Quality, and Safety” as well as the leader of the organization’s first patient flow seminars. He was a member of the Institute of Medicine (currently the National Academy of Medicine) Committees “The Future of Emergency Care in the United States Health System”, “The Learning Health Care System in America” and “Optimizing Scheduling in Health Care.” Dr. Litvak also served as a member of the “National Advisory Committee to the American Hospital Association for Improving Quality, Patient Safety and Performance”. Currently, he serves on the Executive Leadership Council, Strategic Innovation Engine, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
Since 1995 he has led the development and practical application of innovative approaches for managing patient flow variability (introduced by him and Dr. Long) for cost reduction and quality improvement in health care delivery systems. Application of these approaches has resulted in significant quality improvement and multimillion-dollar improvements in the margins for every hospital that has applied them. He is also Principal Investigator in many hospital and hospital systems operations improvement projects. These include CMS sponsored initiative “Partnership for Patients” in NJ and nationwide patient flow initiative in Scotland.
Sandeep Green Vaswani, MBA
is Senior Vice President with the Institute for Healthcare Optimization. Sandeep is responsible for management of hospital flow improvement initiatives. Sandeep has wide ranging experience in hospital business strategy, finance, operations and data-driven business management. He has led patient flow redesign initiatives at a range of US and international healthcare delivery organizations including academic medical centers, community hospitals, primary care facilities, as well as multi-hospital programs such as the CMS-funded Partnership for Patients initiative in New Jersey, and the National Health Service program in Scotland. Additionally, Sandeep teaches operations management principles and application to current and aspiring healthcare executives at various educational and professional development events.
Previously, Sandeep served as Director, Analysis & Planning at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston; establishing the department within their Center for Clinical Excellence. In that role, Sandeep served as an advisor to the hospital executive team. He oversaw strategic and business planning, departmental multi-year planning, cost benchmarking, and the development of capacity utilization and projection models. He played a broad role in the development of the hospital’s new cardiovascular center including strategy planning, financial analysis, Board approval process, architectural design and development, and operational planning. Along with his team, Sandeep led the development of models to assess and project the utilization of hospital capacity such as the operating rooms, inpatient beds, emergency room, cath lab, interventional radiology, outpatient clinics, and endoscopy. This initiative led to an institution-wide focus on enhancement of utilization of existing hospital assets.
Prior to Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Sandeep worked in a variety of settings – management consulting with the strategy firm Monitor Company, equity research, investment banking, and manufacturing. Sandeep serves on the Board of Trustees of the Pro-Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston. Sandeep has an undergraduate degree in electronics engineering from Bombay University, and an MBA from the Stern School of Business at New York University.
Meng H. Kang, MBA
Is Vice President at the Institute for Healthcare Optimization. Meng oversees all creative and business matters including strategic partnerships, implementation strategy, client relationship management, educational programming, marketing, business development, proposals, contract and service sales.
Previously, Meng served as a Fitness Director for a premier club in Boston and established himself as one of the top-performing managers and trainers. Meng completed his MBA at the Franklin W. Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College and received his Bachelor of Science in Exercise Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.