Fred H. Edwards

Fred Edwards, M.D., is Professor and Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the University of Florida / Shands Jacksonville and Chairman of The Society of Thoracic Surgeons National Database.

Dr. Edwards has been involved with the STS Database for over 15 years and was appointed Chairman of the database in 2004.  He developed the first national risk-adjustment models in cardiac surgery and has had a key role in all subsequent STS risk models.  He has published over 120 papers in the peer-reviewed literature, most of which deal with some aspect of outcomes analysis.  His present research is directed toward outcomes analysis, the use of national performance measures in quality assessment, and statistical techniques to objectively determine surgical quality.

Dr. Edwards is active in several national quality organizations.  He now serves on the Quality Alliance Steering Committee, the Steering Committee of the AQA Alliance, the Executive Committee of the AMA Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement, and the Standards Maintenance Committee of the National Quality Forum.  He is Chairman of the NQF Surgery / Anesthesia Technical Advisory Panel and is Vice-Chairman of the Surgical Quality Alliance, which is a quality organization of the American College of Surgeons.