Quality

Thank you for visiting our website. The goal of the Emory Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences Quality team is to support the department's vision and mission. Our department's vision is to be a destination for those who seek excellence and continuous innovation in medical imaging. The department's mission is to be a community dedicated to the promotion of health, discovery and innovation, and educating the future healthcare workforce. We embrace and celebrate a collaborative culture, adaptive approaches to continuous innovation, and aligned partnerships in patient-centered care. 

The values guiding the Quality team support achieving the mission and the vision and are both external- and internal-facing. The first value is to improve care delivery in the department for the benefit of our patients and families. This external-facing value addresses, in addition to our patients, our referring providers, other departments, our collaborators in care, and the health care systems in which we work. The second value is to improve care processes to support our staff, faculty, and trainees. This internal-facing value explicitly acknowledges how our people enable us to realize our department's vision and mission. The drivers of these activities are optimized capacity, ensured safety, electronic workflows, and just culture. We also support the institutional drivers that recognize the importance of the patient experience, quality/safety, joy in practice, and resource stewardship.

Our primary services are quality and process-improvement education and coaching. In addition, we are directly involved in many departmental and site-specific quality and process improvement projects, plus metrics and oversight and regulatory compliance including policies and procedures. We focus on clarifying the problems and challenges that we face and then working in teams to solve the problems. Our goal is to leverage the expertise and compassion of all the members of the department to continuously improve the quality of care we deliver.

Please do not hesitate to contact us about problems, challenges, and ideas you would like to explore and solve.

Sincerely,
Marta Heilbrun, MD, MS
Vice Chair for Quality

Emory Radiology Vision Statement: Emory Radiology will be a destination for those who seek excellence and continuous innovation in medical imaging.

Quality Team Value Statements

1. Improve care delivery in the department, for the benefit of our patients and families (external facing*)
2. Improve care processes to support our staff, faculty, and trainees (internal facing)

*Additional external-facing stakeholders/customers are

• Referring providers/other departments
• Collaborators
• Health system

What are our products/services?

• Quality/process improvement activities
• Quality/safety metrics
• Quality/safety oversight
• Quality/safety education
• Regulatory compliance

We explicitly call out the internal- and external-facing value statements. While there is an overall goal based on the department's vision statement, we may run into conflicts in achieving that goal for our internal- and external-facing customers. For example, an investment in training and developing new skills may conflict with 24/7 patient access.

Marta Heilbrun, MD, MS

After rising to the rank of tenured associate professor in the Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences, with adjunct appointments in Biomedical Informatics and the Department of Surgery in the Division of Urology and serving as Diagnostic Radiology Residency director at the University of Utah, Dr. Heilbrun moved to Emory University School of Medicine in October 2017 in the role of vice chair of quality. The overarching mission of her career has been to define and promote the role of the radiologist, our staff, and the services we oversee in order to provide the most appropriate, highest quality imaging for our patients while maintaining focus on costs and utilization. She is passionate about quality and safety as she believes these are the underpinnings of service excellence. 

Nadja Kadom, MD

Dr. Kadom is an associate professor of radiology and imaging sciences at Emory University, the director of pediatric neuroradiology, director of pediatric neuroradiology research at Egleston, and director of quality for radiology at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta. She completed additional training in the areas of quality and performance improvement and comparative cost-effectiveness analysis. Her scholarly QI/PI projects include adding patient-centered language to radiology reports and facilitating decision supports through disease-specific algorithms. Dr. Kadom has created a QI curriculum for radiology residents at Boston Medical Center, which was adopted by the residency program at Emory as well as the neuroradiology fellowship program at Emory. She is currently the chair of the American Roentgen Ray Society (ARRS) Life-Long Learning Sub-Committee on Performance Improvement. In addition, she also serves as the chair for the safety section of the American Board of Radiology (ABR) Non-Interpretive Skills Committee.

Courtney Moreno, MD

Dr. Courtney C. Moreno graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College majoring in biology. She received her MD degree from Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons and completed diagnostic radiology residency and abdominal imaging fellowship training at Duke University Medical Center. Dr. Moreno serves as the medical director of ultrasound and is focused on standardizing workflows and image acquisition protocols to optimize practices for patients and staff.

Pratik Rachh is the quality program manager in the Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences. He is passionate about improving quality and patient safety for our patients and has led several process improvement initiatives at Emory Healthcare and other academic healthcare institutions since 2010. He always had a keen interest in quality and chose to pursue it as a full-time career after learning more about the subject as part of his graduate school coursework. Dr. Rachh is an MD by training and received his MBA from the University of Portland. He is also an ASQ Six Sigma Black Belt and a Certified Professional in Healthcare Quality. His combined experience of clinical medicine and process improvement helps him guide teams in improving the care of our patients.

Susan Reich, BS

Susan Reich is the enterprise manager of quality for Emory Healthcare’s Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences. She works with all sites within the Emory Healthcare system to analyze and streamline processes for our patients and our employees. Reich has been with Emory Healthcare since 1990. She worked previously as a diagnostic medical sonographer and proudly represented Emory as the first sonographer in the state of Georgia to hold all Registered Diagnostic Medical Sonographer registries (AB, OBGYN, FE, BR, NE). She holds a BS degree in healthcare management and is a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt. Reich is a graduate of the Radiology Leadership Academy and the Emory Quality Academy, and has been a familiar face to the many quality project teams around our campuses.

Matt Zygmont, MD

Dr. Zygmont is a diagnostic radiologist with fellowship training in neuroradiology, currently clinical faculty in the Division of Emergency and Trauma Imaging. He co-chairs the Committee for CT Quality and Safety and has research interests in CT dose reduction, workflow optimization, and quality improvement for imaging services at Emory Healthcare and Grady Memorial Hospital.