Dr. Kjaer serves as Weill Cornell’s Chief Quality and Patient Safety Officer, where he works closely with the leadership of Weill Cornell and NewYork Presbyterian Hospital to support physician-led initiatives focused on improving quality, patient-safety, and risk management across all clinical departments.
Dr. Kjaer is the Program Director of the Obstetric Anesthesiology Fellowship since 2012. Since joining Weill Cornell, he has also taught and supervised on the Labor and Delivery Floor. From 2012-2016, he was the primary investigator for a prospective, randomized, double-blinded study to evaluate the efficacy of IV dexamethasone for nausea prophylaxis prior to Duramorph and bupivacaine spinal anesthesia for scheduled cesarean section. From 2019-2020, he was the PI on a study that monitored maternal temperature during cesarean delivery with a temperature capturing Foley catheter.
Biography
Dr. Kjaer studied at Stanford and UC San Francisco prior to completing his internship, residency, and fellowship training at Harvard. He earned his MBA from Columbia. Dr. Kjaer joined the Weill Cornell faculty in 2000, and has held multiple leadership roles, including as Weill Cornell’s Chief Quality and Patient Safety Officer since 2015. He is Professor of Clinical Anesthesiology, Healthcare Policy and Research at Weill Cornell. He teaches in the Executive MBA/ MS in Healthcare Leadership Program at Cornell, where he has developed a course called “Influencing with Quality and Patient Safety Metrics.” For 2022-2023, Dr. Kjaer served as the President of the Society of Obstetric Anesthesia and Perinatology.
Distinctions:
Finalist for the National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation’s Research Award for “Association of Physician Management Companies and Private Equity Investment With Commercial Health Care Prices Paid to Anesthesia Practitioners”, published in JAMA Internal Medicine
Gave the 14th Robert A. Abraham Endowed Lecture at Johns Hopkins Medicine in 2022
Received Weill Cornell’s Physician of the Year Award in 2014
Patient Safety Award for Quality Improvement in Diagnostic Test Results Communication to Patients
