José Rivera serves as The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center’s chief administrative quality officer. In his role, he oversees quality, patient safety, infection control, accreditation, performance improvement, informatics and analytics, emergency readiness, code blue operations and the program management office. Before joining MD Anderson, Rivera served as Beaumont Health’s vice president for Clinical Operations in which he was responsible for the organization’s strategy and hospital operations. Previously, he served as vice president for quality, safety, infection prevention and physical medicine and rehabilitation. Prior to Beaumont Health, Rivera led inpatient and outpatient quality programs for Nebraska Medicine and strengthened clinical documentation, improve mortality documentation and commit to robustly monitoring quality and safety indicators.

Rivera holds black belt status in Lean methodology and has excelled in systems performance improvement efforts that have surpassed organizational targets, including reduction in hospital acquired conditions, increase in case mix index and executing operational improvements in patient flow/patient throughput for inpatient and emergency services. Throughout his career, Rivera has helped drive major health system initiatives to meaningful improvement in outcomes. These efforts resulted in top 10 rankings in Vizient for his academic health systems in addition to achievements in U.S. News and World Report hospital rankings.

Rivera earned his degree in industrial engineering and a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Nebraska.