Keck Medicine of USC has appointed Vivian Mo, MD, as the chief medical officer for USC Care Medical Group.

In this role, Mo will provide oversight to the medical group’s quality and patient safety agenda while advocating on behalf of Keck Medicine’s physicians and supporting their engagement in clinical practice. Mo also will collaborate with clinical chairs to drive the physician agenda for key operational initiatives including the improvement of clinic flow, the electronic medical record (EMR), patient access to care and patient experience.

“During medical school and throughout my training, I was always taught that my job as a physician was to impart the best and most appropriate care to patients,” Mo said. “I realized that even though health care was delivered during the one-to-one interaction between physician and patient, there were so many underlying factors that made that interaction possible. This fostered and piqued my interest in health care administration and reaffirmed my belief that improving health care at Keck Medicine would involve physicians being engaged with patients and the system.”

Working closely with USC Care leadership, Mo will help shape the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) program, its infrastructure and governance to continually improve the medical group’s annual performance. Additionally, she will serve as chair to key physician committees, including the Clinical Practice Committee of USC Care, and act as USC Care’s appointed physician to handle peer review matters. Mo’s other duties include taking the lead on regulatory and policy matters on behalf of the medical group, while ensuring alignment with Keck Medicine and promoting the delivery of safe, high-quality, high-value care.

“Speaking from a personal and professional perspective, I am very attuned to the amount of stress and pressure that is placed on our physicians through increasing demands in workflow processes and by patient care,” Mo said. “I want to quickly identify ways to decrease physician burnout and promote their well-being.”

Mo currently is a clinical associate professor of medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. She joined USC in 2007 and has since developed a clinical practice in cardiology with a specialty focus in echocardiology.

Prior to joining Keck Medicine, Mo completed her training at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and earned her medical degree at University of Texas Houston Health Science Center. In 2017, she obtained her Master of Health Administration degree at USC, furthering her interest in health care redesign and process improvement.

Mo has been an active physician leader in the community. Most recently, she championed the Care Delivery Redesign effort for the Heart Failure and Cardiology services as well as the optimization of the ambulatory EMR. She comes to the position with a tremendous dedication to Keck Medicine of USC, and a passion for driving quality improvement across the enterprise.

“I hope that as CMO of USC Care I will not only continue to take care of patients, but will also work from the administrative end to affect the processes that go into delivering patient care by making them more safe and efficient for patients and physicians,” Mo said.

— Matthew Vasiliauskas