The Department of Medicine is committed to delivering high quality care to patients as well as equipping our faculty and learners with the skills to lead in quality improvement. The Department of Medicine employs the largest group of faculty within Emory Healthcare and has a large presence at Grady and the Atlanta VA. Emory Healthcare’s quality promise is to provide optimal clinical outcomes, delivered safely, and with outstanding service.
Department of Medicine's Quality Goal
The Emory Healthcare Goal for Quality is to achieve continuous enhancements in clinical outcomes, patient safety, and service, resulting in a national ranking for quality among the top 10 percent of academic medical centers in the U.S. according to the University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC) and Press Ganey. In benchmarking ourselves to other academic medical centers, we are comparing ourselves to the top ranked hospitals in the country. Emory University Hospital (EUH) has one of the highest “case mix index” scores among the UHC hospitals, which means that EUH provides some of the most complex care in the country. We must achieve highly coordinated and safe care as reflected in our outcomes while also documenting patient complexity accurately for risk adjustment.
Training & Development
The Emory Office of Quality offers a variety of training and development in quality for faculty members.
Training for Faculty Members, Residents, Medical School Students (open to all)
The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) offers healthcare quality training open to all levels of healthcare professionals from medical students to senior physicians. For more information about the programs the Institute for Healthcare Improvement offers please visit their IHI website.
Resident Training
The Emory Internal Medicine Residency - Quality Improvement and Patient Safety Curriculum
The curriculum promotes Emory residents to develop QI skills by utilizing the working knowledge of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) model as demonstrated by the ability to carry out an outpatient QI project over the academic year. Residents work as interdisciplinary teams to improve quality of patient care and safety based on their continuity clinic location. Since starting this curriculum in 2006, several projects and posters have been presented at local, national, and international conferences allowing resident to gauge the process of quality improvement with the goal of sustainability of the project. In addition, residents have elective opportunities to lead, coordinate or participate in the design and implementation of QI initiatives at practice, and system levels, using a collaborative team approach by working closely with IT, nursing staff, chief residents and faculty.
Quality Academy
The Emory Healthcare Quality Academy offers 2 courses available to faculty, staff, and residents. Leadership for Healthcare Improvement is a 2-day overview course, and the Practical Methods for Healthcare Improvement is an intensive course involving 12 days over 4 months aimed to develop expertise to independently lead QI projects.
- Learn more about Quality Academy
- For more information about the Emory Quality Academy please contact Nate Spell, III, MD.
Maintenance of Certification
Maintaining board certification requires periodic practice assessment and improvement. ABIM and subspecialty boards offer a variety of ways accomplish this. See the attached article and presentation for information on how local quality improvement efforts may be used to satisfy this requirement.
Emory Quality Council
- Cardiology, Abhinav Goyal, MD, MHS
- Digestive Diseases, Steve Keilin, MD
- Endocrinology, Patrick Bowen, MD
- General Internal Medicine, Anne Tomolo, MD, MPH (Atlanta VA)
- General Internal Medicine, Jason Higdon, MD (Emory Clinic Primary Care)
- General Internal Medicine, Nurcan Ilksoy, MD (Grady Medical Clinic)
- Hospital Medicine, Hasan Shabbir, MD (Emory Johns Creek Hospital)
- Infectious Diseases, Jay Varkey, MD
- Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care, David Murphy, MD, PhD (Grady inpatient/critical care)
- Renal Medicine, Jason Cobb, MD
- Rheumatology & Immunology, Aliza Lipson, MD
- Resident member, Arash Harzand, MD
- Fellow member, Sujun Reddy, MD
- Patient and Family Advisor, John Carter, MPH, PhD
Ad Hoc Quality Council Members:
- William Bornstein, MD, PhD
- Theodore Johnson, II, MD, MPH
- Leslee Shaw, PhD
- James Steinberg, MD
- Richard Gitomer, MD