SHM Announces 2017 Awards of Excellence Winners

Award Winners Make Exemplary Contributions to Hospital Medicine to Improve Care of Hospitalized Patients

The Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM) recently announced the recipients of its 2017 Awards of Excellence. SHM’s annual Awards of Excellence honor hospitalists who exemplify hospital medicine best practices in areas such as teaching, teamwork, research and clinical excellence. The winners will be recognized at SHM’s annual conference, Hospital Medicine 2017, in Las Vegas, Nevada on May 3, 2017.

“These award winners represent hospital medicine’s very best who are leading the way in transforming patient care and our health care system,” notes Brian Harte, MD, SFHM and president of SHM. “Their innovation, dedication and empathy are moving the specialty forward and making care safer and education better while driving our systems toward high reliability.”

The 2017 Awards of Excellence recipients are:

• Clinical Excellence: Barbara Slawski, MD, MS, SFHM, of the Medical College of Wisconsin, for her contributions as the section chief for perioperative medicine. She has fostered a collaborative, multi-disciplinary program that delivers a universal standard of care, which includes one pathway that has led to 72% reduction in VTE, 80% fewer readmissions and $2.5 million in savings in the first 18 months.
• Humanitarian Services: Jonathan Crocker, MD, FHM, of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, for his commitment to serving disadvantaged populations, both locally and internationally, which includes working with Partners in Health in Malawi and Haiti, and leading the Global Health track at BIDMC, based in Botswana. Under his leadership, the number of residents rotating annually to Botswana has increased from 8 in 2012 to more than 30 currently.
• Non-Physicians: Michael E. McFall Jr. is the Patient Service Coordinator in the Section of Hospital Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. He has been at Penn for over 20 years, starting as a unit secretary in 1995. In his current role, he has taken the lead on many QI projects and regularly inspires the clinical staff to do more for their patients. He goes above and beyond his job requirements, so much that his team mates have presented empirical evidence on the effectiveness of his unique role on more than one occasion.
• Outstanding Service: Jeffrey L. Greenwald, MD, SFHM, of Massachusetts General Hospital, for dedicating much of his time and effort to the mission and vision of hospital medicine. As the chair of the Partners System’s High Performance Team on Readmission, he helped lead the development of a novel readmission predictions model, published in 2016. Dr. Greenwald has also served as a mentor for 10 Project BOOST sites over the last 10 years.
• Research: Jeffrey H. Barsuk, MD, MS, SFHM, of Northwestern Memorial Hospital, for his research on optimizing physician, nurse and paramedic clinical performance using simulation technology based on the mastery learning theoretical framework over the past decade. His team has published over 60 articles on this topic, and his research continues to grow.  
• Teaching: Steven L. Cohn, MD, FACP, SFHM, of Jackson Memorial Hospital and the University of Miami Hospital Miller School of Medicine, for his continued dedication to medical education. Dr. Cohn is a frequently requested grand rounds speaker and has presented research findings and coordinated educational workshops at various national meetings.
• Teamwork: Mountain State Health Alliance’s Johnston Memorial Hospital Sepsis Initiative: Upon careful analysis of data which revealed that the mortality rate for patients with sepsis at JHM was averaging around 17%, The Sepsis Initiative, led by Amit Vashist, MD, MBA, CPE, FACP, FAPA, was created. A cross functional team was assembled by Dr. Vashist and MSHA’s clinical performance partner, Premier Inc. The team included John Ray, MD; David Simmons, MD; Hughes Melton, MD; Rolande Baker, RN; Judy Dickenson, BSMT; Kim Godbey, RN; Mary Alice Roe, RN; Nikki Van Buren, RN; Teresa Castle, RN, and Tony Stiltner, Systems Analyst. The team targeted three key areas: personnel, processes and technology. The sepsis mortality rate decreased from 17% in 2013 to 5.6% in 2015-2016, saved well over 70 lives and decreased the cost per case, cumulatively saving $1.6 million.
• Junior Investigator Award: Dr. Stephanie Mueller, Instructor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a hospitalist researcher at Brigham and Women’s Hospital for her research  on care transitions of hospitalized patients. She is currently studying the process of inter-hospital transfers as part of a career development K08 award received from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). Dr. Mueller is a member of SHM’s Research Committee and ad-hoc reviewer for the Journal of Hospital Medicine.
• Junior Investigator Award: Dr. Valerie Press, Assistant Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics at the University of Chicago, for her work on improving patient-centered education for underserved patients with chronic disease and limited health literacy through novel interventions in the community and hospital settings. Her main area of focus is self-management skills for hospitalized patients with asthma and COPD. Dr. Press is now a K-funded health services researcher who has served on SHM’s Research Committee since 2012 and as a reviewer for the Journal of Hospital Medicine.