About Us
Tungsten QI Partners is a clinician-run, female-led quality improvement firm. We work alongside healthcare organizations, technology companies, and individual leaders to build the kind of change that sticks.
The Founding Story
Kandice Garcia spent years working in radiology and quality improvement, watching talented clinicians struggle to lead change inside complex systems. The issue was rarely a lack of skill or commitment. More often, teams were missing the structure, support, and practical tools needed to turn improvement ideas into lasting change.
Through that work, Kandice saw a consistent pattern: technology was often the key to change, but also one of its biggest barriers. Teams had access to new tools, but needed the structure, support, and workflow alignment to use them well.
She founded Tungsten QI Partners to help close that gap.
Instead of handing teams a report and walking away, Tungsten QI partners alongside healthcare organizations to understand their environment, work through problems together, and build internal capability that lasts beyond the engagement.
The goal is not just to improve a single project. It is to help teams grow stronger in how they lead, communicate, and sustain meaningful improvement over time.
Our Team
Kandice Garcia
Kandice Garcia Tomkins is a registered nurse, quality improvement expert, and founder of Tungsten QI Partners. Her work in healthcare quality improvement includes co-creating the RITE program at Stanford and partnering with the American College of Radiology to launch the ACR Learning Network.
Through that work, she has supported hundreds of improvement projects across radiology departments nationwide and helped build a national community of healthcare improvers. She founded Tungsten QI Partners to help healthcare organizations and technology companies navigate the complexity of change, implementation, and measurable improvement.
Founding Partner, CEO
Daisha Marsh
Daisha Marsh is a radiologic technologist, quality improvement coach, and Partner at Tungsten QI Partners with more than 20 years of frontline clinical and leadership experience.
Her work has spanned leading health systems, operational improvement, AI integration, CT education, stroke measures, patient satisfaction, and turnaround time improvement. Since joining Tungsten QI Partners in 2023, she has coached teams through technology implementation and quality improvement projects across multiple healthcare organizations. Her work has also been published and presented at national radiology and quality conferences.
Partner, Director of Operations
Partner, Director of ConsultingValerie Rigby
Valerie Rigby is a registered nurse and quality improvement coach with more than 30 years of healthcare experience across multiple states, specialties, and health systems.
Her background includes pediatric radiology, sedation nursing, clinical quality, improvement advising, and national coaching through the American College of Radiology. Since joining Tungsten QI Partners in 2023, she has supported project teams, facilitated ImPower training, and helped healthcare organizations build stronger quality improvement infrastructure.
Tungsten
The rarest, most resilient element on the periodic table.
A resilient metal known for its strength, stability, and ability to withstand extreme conditions.
In radiology, tungsten plays a powerful but often unseen role. It helps generate the X-ray beam, illuminating what cannot be seen on the surface.
We chose the name Tungsten with intention.
Like the element itself, our work is steady, strong, and built to support what others cannot always see. We partner alongside healthcare teams through the hard parts of change, helping create the structure, clarity, and conditions for lasting improvement.
301 projects completed, and counting.
