Sean R. Townsend, MD, is Vice President of Quality & Safety at California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) in San Francisco, California. He is also Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Townsend is a practicing intensivist in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care at CPMC. Dr. Townsend led the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s (IHI) work on sepsis and served on the Surviving Sepsis Campaign (SSC) steering committee for many years. Dr. Townsend serves as measure steward for CMS’s national sepsis quality measure, SEP-1.