Sean R. Townsend, M.D., is Chief Medical Executive for Clinical Transformation at Sutter Health. Previously he served as Vice President of Quality at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, California 2010-2023 and then Chief Operating Officer in 2023-2025. Dr. Townsend is board certified in critical care medicine and a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Townsend attended medical school at the University of Chicago, Pritzker School of Medicine and completed residency at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and pulmonary and critical care fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. He is a nationally recognized leader in patient safety and quality improvement, a faculty member at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement for 20 years, and a founding leader of the Surviving Sepsis Campaign (SSC). Presently Dr. Townsend serves as measure steward for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Service’s first sepsis quality measure, SEP-1.