SHM Announces 2019 Awards of Excellence Winners

Award Winners Make Exemplary Contributions to Hospital Medicine to Improve Patient Care

The Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM) recently announced the recipients of its 2019 Awards of Excellence, honoring hospitalists who exemplify hospital medicine best practices in areas such as clinical leadership, teaching, teamwork, research and humanitarian services, among others. The winners were recognized at SHM’s annual conference, Hospital Medicine 2019, in National Harbor, MD, on March 26. 

“Hospital medicine professionals continue to be leaders in our evolving healthcare landscape,” says Nasim Afsar, MD, MBA, SFHM and immediate past president of SHM. “This year’s Awards of Excellence winners exemplify leadership in the field through their innovative contributions to hospital medicine and passion for improving patient care.”

The 2019 Awards of Excellence recipients are:

• Clinical Leadership for Physicians: Hyung (Harry) Cho, MD, an academic hospitalist and the inaugural Chief Value Officer for NYC Health + Hospitals health system, the largest public health system in the US serving more than 1.4 million people annually. In his previous role as the Director of Quality, Safety and Value at Mt. Sinai Hospital, he founded and led the hospital High-Value Care Committee, eventually leading more than 90 faculty, residents and students in initiatives across the health system to improve costs and outcomes.

• Humanitarian Services: Kristian Olson, MD, MPH, DTM&H, an internist and pediatrician, who has been an academic hospitalist member of the Core Educator Faculty in the Department of Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital since its founding in 2005. He is also the Director of the Consortium for Affordable Medical Technologies, also known as CAMTech. Dr. Olson’s work resulted in the creation of a network of over 350 midwives still in existence who re-train each other in newborn resuscitation and post-partum hemorrhage three times per year. He is an inventor and developer of the Augmented Infant Resuscitator, a device that enables birth attendants to achieve effective ventilation in less than half the time and maintain it 50 percent longer.

• Clinical Leadership for Nurse Practitioners (NPs) and Physician Assistants (PAs): Lorraine L. Britting, MSN, CNP, SFHM, the Clinical Director of Advanced Practice Providers in Cardiology Medicine and a practicing acute care nurse practitioner at the Cardiovascular Institute at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. She has overseen the growth of the program from eight to thirty-two advanced practice providers in the last decade. Her efforts extend across the medical center, by creating and chairing multiple committees designed to address credentialing, billing, reimbursement and recruitment issues specific to advanced practice providers.

• Outstanding Service in Hospital Medicine: Kendall M. Rogers, MD, CPE, FACP, SFHM, is Professor and Chief of the Division of Hospital Medicine at University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, a group he founded 13 years ago. His national contributions to hospital medicine include promoting protected quality time for hospitalists, developing hospitalist leaders, promoting professionalism and enjoining information technology vendors to improve design and innovations so that health IT may achieve its full potential. He has led numerous quality innovations that improved patient care in many areas, including glycemic control, VTE prophylaxis, transitions of care and management of alcohol withdrawal. His role as Lead Mentor in SHM’s Glycemic Control Mentored Implementation Program contributed to SHM receiving the 2011 Eisenberg Award from the National Quality Forum and the Joint Commission.

• Research: Tara Lagu, MD, MPH, the Associate Director of the Institute for Healthcare Delivery and Population Science and an Associate Professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School at Baystate Medical Center. Dr. Lagu has published 103 original peer-reviewed manuscripts in high-impact journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), The Journal of Hospital Medicine, and JAMA. Her research is primarily focused on improving the quality and value of care for patients with acute illness. She has published papers examining hospital care quality for patients with sepsis, heart failure, acute coronary syndrome, pneumonia and delirium and has an R01 aimed at identifying strategies used by Medicare Accountable Care Organizations to reduce admission rates for patients with heart failure.

• Teaching: Christopher Moreland, MD, MPH, associate professor of medicine and hospitalist at University of Texas Health San Antonio, where he also serves as associate residency program director. He has established himself as a well-respected clinical educator, innovator and administrator committed to seeing medical students and residents advance their abilities. He has been involved in several initiatives and innovations. Being deaf himself, Chris has continuously mentored deaf residents and healthcare students across North America, while advising educators who work with deaf health trainees. He published the first formal study of a subpopulation of physicians and students with a disability – hearing loss – in 2013.
  
  
• Management in Hospital Medicine: Stephanie Perry, MA, SFHM, the Director of Hospital Medicine Services at Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, is a leader in building sustainability into the work of hospitalists. While at Virginia Mason, she developed an internal auditing and education platform to improve revenue cycle opportunities which brought over $500,000 in additional gross revenue to the organization in 2018. Stephanie also created a structured onboarding platform for hospitalists and created a new flexible scheduling method to improve the team’s work-life balance.
  
  
• Teamwork Award in Quality Improvement: Mt. Sinai High-Value Care Team: multidisciplinary group focused on reducing overuse, decreasing costs throughout the institution, and allowing clinicians to focus on providing outstanding care and developing relationships with their patients. Founded by Dr. Harry Cho, the High-Value Care team has chosen projects that have meaningfully impacted waste reduction and patient care. They have created a sustainable structure engaging multiple members of the care team, including staff, trainees, and students. Its collaborative environment in and of itself demonstrates high value as it helps improve staff satisfaction and retention. In addition to many hospitalists, the High-Value Care team consists of members of Mt. Sinai’s Nursing, Medicine, Pharmacy, Laboratory and IT Departments, including Dr. Andrew Dunn, Dr. Beth Raucher, Dr. John McClaskey, Nicole Wells, Suzanne Cushnie, Surafel Tsega and Gina Caliendo.

For more information about SHM’s Awards of Excellence, visit hospitalmedicine.org/awards.