Javier Sala Mercado M.D., Ph.D.

Vice CMO & COO Model Institute of Cardiology, Córdoba Argentina. 

Professor and Director of the Cardiology Program, National University of Córdoba, Córdoba Argentina. 

Professor of Physiology, Cardiology Residency Program, Model Institute of Cardiology, Córdoba Argentina. 

Adjunct Assistant Professor, Physiology Department, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA. 

Dr Javier Sala received his M.D. degree and training in Cardiology in Córdoba Argentina. Being chief of residents, he moved to the US in August 2001 as a Fulbright scholar and obtained his Ph.D. in Physiology at Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA, in May 2005. Upon his return to Argentina after almost 11years in the US, he was appointed as the Vice COO and Vice CMO in May 2012 at the Instituto Modelo de Cardiologia Privado S.R.L. (IMC) a boutique institution in Córdoba Argentina with a strong focus on cardiovascular patients, where he launched an institutional transformation directed towards lean implementation and international accreditations. He was responsible for the IMC Argentinean Quality Accreditation, ITAES (recognized by ISQUA, Europe) in 2014; the American College of Cardiology (ACC) Accreditation in Chest Pain (2017), the ACC Accreditation in Heart Failure (HF) in 2018 being the only center accredited outside the US by the ACC in HF, and recently in August 2019 the IMC received the ACC recognition as an International Center of Excellence. He leads the institutional Lean transformation since 2012 and has participated of the 9th Cohort of the Academy for Excellence in Healthcare at the Fisher School of Business, Ohio State University, Columbus Ohio USA (2016). He was the program advisor of the Fisher program, “Creating lean leaders to drive change in Argentina“, in 2018 and is also the advisor for the same course that will take place in Chile 2020. Dr Sala has been invited to lecture Nationally and Internationally about his approach to transform a healthcare organization. He organized the first Lean Healthcare Summit in Argentina, that took place in 2018. He has more than 40 publications in peer reviewed journals, book chapter, and has been a reviewer of 11 journals among them the JACC, Circulation Research, etc. He has been responsible for the implementation of Lean throughout the organization that has significantly added value to patients. In his current role, he is responsible for the operation and financial performance of the IMC expansion and is responsible for the creation of the Lean Institute Argentina.