Javier Sala Mercado

Dr. Sala received his medical degree and Cardiology training in Argentina. Being Chief Resident, he moved to the US in 2001 as a Fulbright Scholar and earned his Ph.D. in Physiology at Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, USA, in May 2005.

Upon his return to Argentina after almost 11 years in the US, he was appointed Vice Chief Operational Officer and Vice Chief Medical Officer at May 2012 at the Instituto Modelo de Cardiología Privado S.R.L. (IMC) a boutique institution in 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 accreditation of the IMC by the Technical Institute of Accreditation of Health Establishments of Argentina, ITAES (recognized by ISQUA, the International Society of Quality Accreditation, Europe) in 2014; accreditation by the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the American Heart Association as an Chest Pain Center with Cath -PCI in 2017; Accreditation by the ACC in Heart Failure (HF) in 2018, being the first center accredited in HF outside the US by the ACC, and in 2019 the IMC received recognition as an International Center of Excellence from the ACC.

He has been leading the institutional Lean transformation since 2012, where the goal is for the IMC to become the benchmark health care provider in Argentina with a value[1]based health care model that includes quality, safety, and cost-efficiency. Dr Sala has participated in the 9th Cohort of the Academy for Excellence in Healthcare at the Fisher School of Business at Ohio State University, Columbus Ohio USA (2016).

He was an advisor to the LATAM program at the same university "Creating lean leaders to drive change in Argentina" in 2018 and has been part of the American College of Cardiology Solution Suite Oversight Committee from 2020 through 2023. Dr. Sala has been invited to lecture nationally and internationally on his approach to transforming a healthcare organization. He has more than 40 publications in peer-reviewed journals, several book chapters, and has been a reviewer for 11 prestigious international research journals, including JACC, Circulation Research, etc., and in his current role in 2024, is responsible for the operation and financial performance of the IMC expansion and responsible for the outreach of the Instituto Lean Argentina, member of the Lean Global Network.