CHARLENE J. LUDLOW, MS, RN, CIC  | Senior Vice President of Nursing

Charlene Ludlow is Senior Vice President of Nursing at ECMC. Previously, she served as Vice President and Chief Quality & Safety Officer at ECMC, where she was responsible for the facility-wide Quality & Patient Safety program. As Senior Vice President of Nursing, Charlene leads over 2,000 ECMC frontline team members providing strategic vision and direction for the delivery of high quality patient care delivered with compassion, consistent with the ECMC values and mission.

Prior to becoming Senior Vice President of Nursing, Charlene directed process improvements that supported high quality, safe patient care outcomes. Departments she oversaw included Patient Safety (inclusive of Quality Assessment Performance Improvement & Infection Prevention) and EOC Management (Environmental Services, Pharmacy, Laboratory, Plant Operations/Construction & Emergency Preparedness). Since March 2020, Charlene has chaired ECMC COVID-19 Task Force, coordinating all aspects of the institution’s response to the pandemic. Charlene is also responsible for Joint Commission Accreditation and Regulatory matters and management of survey process by regulatory bodies.

Over the years, Charlene’s leadership has enabled ECMC to: raise its Leapfrog score from D in 2014 to A in 2017; improve data analysis process for OPPE and physician-specific service line outcome reports; expand its Patient Safety program by coordinating Root Cause analysis to include all team members from managers to frontline staff and focus on change strategies; coordinate Ebola grant deliverables and lead frontline staff to develop competence in techniques and safety planning; achieve Gold Plus AHA for CHF and Stroke; and improve data reporting to include executive dashboard and targeted dashboards for specific service lines with benchmarks and goals.

Board certified in Infection Control, Charlene also serves as adjunct faculty at Erie Community College, where she provides the NYS Mandatory Infection Prevention Course to licensed healthcare professionals. In addition to serving as a representative on the New York State APIC Coordinating Council, she remains an active member of Association of Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) Chapter 111 – Greater Buffalo, National APIC Consulting Services, NYS Technical Advisory Committee for Infection Prevention, and UNYSTS Quality Committee.