The mission of the Office of the Chief Medical Officer (OCMO) is to lead and support our expert faculty and staff in order to deliver the highest quality of care aligned with Brigham and Women’s Hospital ongoing efforts towards a culture of inclusion and belonging.
The Office of the Chief Medical Officer at Brigham and Women’s Hospital provides leadership and integration, linking all aspects of care delivery areas in ambulatory, in/outpatient services, and care continuum.
The OCMO consists of the following departments:
Charles A. Morris, MD, MPH, is the Chief Medical Officer at Brigham and Women's Hospital. Dr. Morris has served as the program director for the Division of General Medicine Primary Care Residency and as the Associate Medical Director of Primary Care, both in the Department of Medicine.
He has practiced primary care and hospital-based medicine at BWH and has been the Medical Director for Brigham Circle Medical Associates. Morris has led several quality improvement and population health initiatives. He directly oversaw the creation of and operations for an ambulatory population management program that advanced quality of care for several thousand BWH patients with chronic disease. He has held several important leadership positions and is an active teacher of clinical medicine in the ambulatory clinics and inpatient wards.
He is a graduate of Princeton University and Case Western Reserve School of Medicine, after which he completed a residency in Internal Medicine at BWH, where he also served as chief medical resident. He obtained his Masters in Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health. He joined the faculty at BWH in 2002, and is an assistant professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Paul Chen is the Associate Chief Medical Officer and Vice President of Medical Affairs at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and is an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Chen joined the Brigham Emergency Medicine faculty in 2015 and continues to practice in the Brigham family of Emergency Departments (EDs). He has held numerous leadership roles in Emergency Medicine, most recently the vice chair of Clinical Affairs in 2023. In addition, he has served as medical director for the BWH ED and associate chief of the BWFH ED. His leadership expertise has extended to every area of Emergency Medicine clinical activities, including quality and process initiatives, IT structures, staffing and scheduling, and cross-departmental and hospital programs. Dr. Chen has served as director of the MGB Fellowship in Emergency Medicine Administration and teaches in the International Emergency Department Leadership Institute.
A native of Chattanooga, TN, Dr. Chen is a graduate of Amherst College and Tufts University School of Medicine, where he obtained his MD and MBA. He completed his residency in Emergency Medicine and served as chief resident at New York-Presbyterian Queens. In 2016, 2021 and 2023, Paul was recognized by his peers with the Ron M. Walls Faculty Leadership Award, which acknowledges a faculty member who is fundamental to the success of the department and serves as a role model to the hospital community.
Dr. Sonali Desai is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a practicing rheumatologist. She serves as Vice President of Quality/Associate Chief Medical Officer at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Desai has worked at the Brigham for 17 years and within the Department of Quality and Safety (DQS) for a decade. Dr. Desai conducts research on improving the quality of care and patient safety with a focus on the ambulatory setting, with over 40 peer-reviewed publications. Her work has lead to her receiving the Donabedian Award in Quality & Safety in 2019 from the American Public Health Association for Ambulatory Safety Nets and Diagnostic Error Reduction.
Dr. Desai has led a variety of novel and innovative safety programs using artificial intelligence and electronic medical records that have been scaled across the hospital, our Mass General Brigham system and the Greater Boston region. She has also taught internationally in quality and safety and was a founding program director at HMS for the Safety, Quality Informatics and Leadership program.
She is a native of Massachusetts and attended both college and medical school at Brown University in Rhode Island. She completed her internal medicine residency and Chief residency at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, her rheumatology fellowship at BWH, and her Master’s in Public Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Marissa Cauley, PA-C, serves as the Chief Advanced Practice Provider Officer at Brigham and Women’s and Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospitals and is a practicing hospitalist physician assistant.
Marissa began her career in advanced practice at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Cardiac Surgery in 2006, transitioning to BWH in 2011 as part of the Hospital Medicine service. For over a decade, she was Co-Chief of the PACE Hospital Medicine team, where she led exponential growth of the service, played a key role in advancing quality improvement and operational initiatives, and served as the PA Co-Dyad Leader for BWH inpatient services during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, she was honored with the BWH Distinguished Physician Assistant Award and became the first PA at BWH to serve as a Unit Medical Director within the Hospital Medicine Unit.
Marissa has also contributed to the Massachusetts Association of Physician Assistants (MAPA), serving two terms as Director-at-Large. Since 2022, Marissa has served as Senior Director of BWH PA Services, overseeing and advancing a community of nearly 600 physician assistants—the largest group of PAs in the MGB system and in New England.
A Massachusetts native, Marissa is a graduate of Boston University and the Quinnipiac University Physician Assistant Program. At BWH, she completed the CPIP and Brigham Leadership Programs.
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