Congratulations to Dr. Sonali Parekh Desai, daughter of Bipin and Meera Parekh, who was named one of Boston's Top Doctors.

Sonali Parekh Desai, MD

Directory of Quality, Department of Medicine

Directory of Ambulatory Patient Safety

Assistant Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Rheumatology, Immunology and Allergy

4.96 out of 5

(81 Ratings, 11 Comments)

Dr. Sonali Desai is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a practicing rheumatologist. She serves as the Medical Director of Ambulatory Patient Safety at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the Medical Director of Quality for the Department of Medicine, and is a practicing rheumatologist. Dr. Desai conducts research on improving the quality of care and patient safety with a focus on the ambulatory setting, with over 30 peer-reviewed publications. Dr. Desai’s contributions at Brigham & Women’s hospital (BWH) cover clinical care, research, administrative, and teaching roles. She sees complex rheumatology patients at the BWH Arthritis Center, a busy, tertiary care referral practice with both local and regional referrals and at the BWH Fish Center for Women’s Health, a multispecialty practice with a unique, integrated care model for women with rheumatic diseases.

In the Department of Medicine’s Quality Program, Dr. Desai has lead work on chronic disease management in diabetes, hypertension and rheumatoid arthritis; high-risk hospital admissions for heart failure and COPD; opioid management, subspecialty focused care such as inflammatory bowel disease, hepatitis, HIV, and asthma. In the Ambulatory Patient Safety realm, Dr. Desai has developed programs in safety reporting and feedback, medication reconciliation, S.A.F.E. approach for staff safety, and safety nets to reduce missed and delayed diagnosis of colon and lung cancer. She is expanding her team and focus to pharmacist-led medication error reduction, safety nets for cervical, breast and prostate cancer, and diagnostic error. Her work has lead to her receiving the Donabedian Award in Quality & Safety in 2019 from the American Public Health Association for Ambulatory Safety Nets and Diagnostic Error Reduction.

Dr. Desai is also and served as a Program Director (2015-2017) for an innovative global education, blended learning course titled Safety, Quality, Informatics, and Leadership at HMS. She is a native of Massachusetts and attended both college and medical school at Brown University in Rhode Island. She completed her internal medicine residency and Chief residency at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, her rheumatology fellowship at BWH, and her Master’s in Public Health at the Harvard School of Public Health.