Overview

Dr. Di Francesco graduated from the University of California Los Angeles with a BS in Microbiology and Kinesiology in 1989. He attended Emory University School of Medicine finishing in 1993 and remained at Emory for his Internal Medicine residency from 1993 to 1996. He spent one year in private practice and subsequently returned to join the Division of General Internal Medicine as an academic faculty member in 1997. In 2001, he became both the Associate Program Director for the Internal Medicine residency program as well as Assistant Chief of Medicine at Grady Memorial Hospital. He also served as Co-Director of the Division of General Internal Medicines Hospital Medicine Unit at Grady Memorial Hospital from 2002-2004 and in 2010 he became the Program Director for the J. Willis Hurst Internal Medicine Residency Program. In 2016, he was promoted to Associate Vice Chair, Education and Assistance Chief of Medicine at Grady for the Department of Medicine. In his role in the residency program, he is responsible for developing and directing the Point-of-Care diagnostics curriculum for students, residents, fellows, and faculty. In addition, he spearheads programs that emphasize and expand bedside teaching and medical decision-making at Grady Memorial Hospital and leads the Distinctions Program in Medical Innovation for our residents, which he developed. He is involved in improving the patient care and learning environment at Grady in his role as Assistant Chief of Service for Emory's Department of Medicine.

Clinical
Dr. Di Francesco spends 4.5 months a year as an Attending the General Medical Wards at Grady Memorial Hospital and participates as a supervising Attending in the Primary Care Center and High Risk Pre-Op clinic during his off ward months.

Service
He has been Assistant Chief of Medicine at Grady Memorial Hospital since 2001 and he is actively involved in continuous service improvements. He is currently the Co-Chair of the Health Information Management Committee at Grady Memorial Hospital. He is a General Medicine/Hospitalist representative on the Internal Medicine Quality Committee as well as the Best Practices and the Pharmacy & Therapeutics Antimicrobials Subcommittees at Grady Memorial Hospital.

Teaching
He most enjoys teaching the internal medicine housestaff and medical students. While at Emory he has received a number of teaching awards including the Golden Apple Teaching Award (1999, 2001, 2005, 2007); the Juha P.Kokko Teaching Award (2002, 2004, 2006, 2008); the Best Inpatient Attending Award (2009, 2011) the Annette Bernard Outpatient Teaching Award (1998, 2001); and the Society of Hospital Medicine National Teaching Award (2003).

Research
Dr. Di Francescos academic interests include: community-acquired pneumonia, acute heart failure, aortic dissection, acute pericarditis, pulmonary embolism, hospital medicine, physical examination skills and the use of point of care technologies at the bedside in medicine. He has conducted several workshops in the area of managing community-acquired pneumonia, point of care devices/diagnostics in medicine and teaching at the bedside. He has published articles and book chapters in the areas of community acquired pneumonia, acute pericarditis, teaching and point of care technologies at the beside. Currently he is focused on point of care diagnostic research in collaboration with colleagues at Georgia Tech.

Academic Appointment

• Eminent Clinician, Department of Medicine, Emory University School of Medicine
• Professor of Medicine, Division of General Internal Medicine, Emory University School of Medicine

Education

Research