Pioneering Hospitalists Earn Masters of Hospital Medicine Designation
Three pioneering hospitalists will join seven distinguished colleagues at the pinnacle of recognition from their field when SHM inducts them as Masters of Hospital Medicine (MHM) at HM12 in San Diego in April, singling them out for what the society calls “the utmost demonstration of dedication to the field of hospital medicine through significant contributions to the development and maturation of the profession.”
While the practice of hospital medicine can be personally satisfying, leadership positions are even more gratifying from developing “systems of care that affect not just my own patients but all patients in the hospital,” says Patrick J. Cawley, MD, MBA, MHM, CPE, FACP, FACHE, chief medical officer at Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) Medical Center in Charleston, where he is responsible for the quality and safety of all of its patient care programs and clinical service lines.
Dr. Cawley, one of this year’s MHM honorees, is a past president of SHM. He founded an HM program at Duke University and later managed a private HM practice in Conway, S.C., before coming to MUSC.
Peter Lindenauer, MD, MSc, MHM, FACP, who now directs the Center for Quality of Care Research at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Mass., is also being honored. Hired as a hospitalist at the University of California at San Francisco in July 1996, he was a founding SHM board member, then called the National Association of Inpatient Physicians (NAIP).
Since moving to Baystate, Dr. Lindenauer has held leadership roles in quality improvement, clinical informatics, and research. His center studies the quality and outcomes of hospital care, the effectiveness of treatments and care strategies for patients with common medical conditions, and methods for translating evidence-based treatments into routine clinical practice.
The third honoree, Mark Williams, MD, FACP, MHM, professor and chief of the division of hospital medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, now leads one of the largest hospitalist practices in an academic setting, but he also founded one of the first hospitalist groups at an inner city public hospital, Grady Hospital in Atlanta, in 1998.
An inaugural fellow of hospital medicine, a past president of SHM, and founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of Hospital Medicine, Dr. Williams has served on numerous SHM committees. He is the principal investigator of SHM’s Project BOOST, and leads its new Hospitalist Program Peak Performance initiative. His published research focuses on quality improvement (QI), care transitions, teamwork and health literacy.
