SHM’s Award of Excellence in Outstanding Service in Hospital Medicine

Dr. Flora Kisuule, MD, SFHM, is an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the vice chair for clinical operations for the department of medicine at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. While at Johns Hopkins University, both in Baltimore, she codeveloped a hospitalist fellowship program that she now directs, as well as a fellowship program specifically for nurse practitioners and physician assistants. Under her leadership as the associate director of the division of hospital medicine, she helped to bring Johns Hopkins Bayview hospitalists’ quality and mortality indicators into the top 5% nationwide and reduced hospital-acquired conditions at Hopkins Bayview to the best of the four regional Hopkins Health System hospitals.

Dr. Flora Kisuule

Nationally, she has served on several SHM committees, facilitated at multiple SHM leadership courses, served as vice president of SHM’s Baltimore Chapter, and consulted on hospitalist programs around the country. Internationally, Dr. Kisuule has developed and mentored hospitalist programs in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Central America. She is currently developing a training program in hospital medicine in Panama and is a Senior Fellow in Hospital Medicine.

SHM’s Award of Excellence in Teamwork in Quality Improvement

Since 2011, the Johns Hopkins Health System hospitals have conducted quality improvement projects to increase the value of care for their patients. Their amazing work catalyzed a grass-roots initiative involving faculty and residents at both Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center.

The Johns Hopkins Health System High-Value Care Committee

With a unification of the EHR across the health system, RedondaMiller, MD, MBA, president of Johns Hopkins Hospital, and Renee Demski, MSW, MBA, vice president of quality for Johns Hopkins Health System, created the Johns Hopkins Health System High-Value Care Committee to operationalize initiatives across all six hospitals and Johns Hopkins community physicians. The committee is under the leadership of Trushar Dungarani, DO, FHM, from Howard County General Hospital and Lenny Feldman, MD, SFHM, Amit Pahwa, MD, and Pamela Johnson, MD, from Johns Hopkins Hospital, and comprises provider representatives from each institution and other important contributors from various specialties, including Mike Borowitz, MD, PhD; Dr. Ken Lee, DrPH; Emily Pherson, PharmD; Amy Knight, MD; Tim Niessen, MD, MPH; Keisha Perrin, and Clare Rock.

Initiatives directed by the committee have included reducing inappropriate testing for Clostridium difficile, folate testing for anemia, and duplicative imaging exams, among others. In the 18 months since inception, the committee reduced charges to patients and payers by nearly $4 million and hospital costs by more than $200,000.

Members of this committee joined forces with like-minded institutions to create the High Value Practice Academic Alliance in 2016. Faculty leaders from more than 80 academic centers are now collaborating to increase health care value on a national scale through quality improvement projects, education, and dissemination.

SHM’s Award of Excellence in Teaching

Jennifer O’Toole, MD, MEd, is a med-peds hospitalist at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and University of Cincinnati Medical Center. She serves as the director of the combined internal medicine and pediatrics residency program and is the director of education for the Children’s Hospital division of hospital medicine. In these roles, Dr. O’Toole has established an acute care track for her med-peds residents interested in careers in hospital medicine and a career development boot camp for early-career faculty members and fellows in the division of hospital medicine.

Dr. Jennifer O’Toole

Perhaps Dr. O’Toole’s most instrumental role as an educator has been her involvement in influential educational programs nationally, including the I-PASS Handoff program. Implementation of I-PASS decreased medical errors by 23% and preventable adverse events by 30% in more than 10,000 patient admissions across nine North American hospitals. She has authored more than 30 peer-reviewed publications related to medical education and has presented more than 50 workshops at national meetings. After serving as a member of the planning committee for the Pediatric Hospital Medicine meeting, she is cochair for the 2018 meeting.