Gay Wayland, RN, CPHQ

HRO Expert

Gay has more than 30 years of experience in clinical services and operational, supply chain and strategy advisory services for healthcare providers. Her expertise includes labor productivity, and clinical process improvement.

Gay held several nursing and management positions in hospital settings within a variety of disciplines, including critical care, clinical quality informatics and contracting. She most recently was a System Contracting Director responsible for managing a $500 million portfolio of Perioperative products and services for DignityHealth in Phoenix, AZ In that role she implemented strategies for managing utilization initiatives, promoting safety in procedural areas  and ensuring  standardization of products and processes through surgeon driven Clinical Advisory Teams and a clinician driven Surgical Council.

Gay has also worked for the Hospital Association of San Diego and Imperial Counties as the VP of Patient Safety and Quality. In this role, she served as an expert resource for members by identifying quality improvement best-practices, models, and other proven and effective strategies and providing assistance to members seeking to expand their quality efforts, enabling peer-to-peer connectivity to facilitate learning and sharing of experiences, and bringing practitioners and industry leaders together to share knowledge and foster innovations in quality and patient safety.  Gay was previously responsible for publicly reported quality data for Scripps Memorial in La Jolla, CA., including management of a team of clinical abstractors and data analysts, and implementing process improvement projects such as applying LEAN principles to streamline the peer review process and adverse drug event reduction and reporting. Gay has also been responsible for managing a multi-year Breakthrough Series in collaboration with IHI.

Gay holds an M.B.A. from California State University and a B.A. from the University of California. She is a registered nurse and has received certifications as a Six Sigma green belt and is a certified professional in healthcare quality.