Society of Hospital Medicine Announces 2018 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 2018 Awards of Excellence. SHM’s annual Awards of Excellence honor hospitalists who exemplify hospital medicine best practices in areas such as clinical excellence, teaching, teamwork, research and humanitarian services, among others. The winners were recognized at SHM’s annual conference, Hospital Medicine 2018, in Orlando, Florida on April 10, 2018.  

“These award recipients are leading the way in transforming patient care and our health care system,” notes Ron Greeno, MD, MHM and president of SHM. “They are the leaders in hospital medicine that will move our specialty into the future through their groundbreaking efforts and dedication to improving the practice of hospital medicine.”

The 2018 Awards of Excellence recipients are:

• Clinical Excellence for Physicians: Rick J. Hilger, MD, SFHM, a hospitalist with HealthPartners Regions Hospital in St. Paul, Minnesota for 16 years. His work in this area was named Best Clinical Innovation at Hospital Medicine 2012, where he presented on using care plans to improve the care of high-risk patients. His collaborative approach to solving complex problems is demonstrated by the amount of time he has volunteered to help other organizations improve their care of high utilizers. Over 90 organizations and hospitals have reached out for assistance in starting their own committees, and Dr. Hilger has shared his time and care plan templates with each one. 

• Humanitarian Services: Michelle Morse, MD, MPH, a hospitalist and the Assistant Program Director for the Internal Medicine Residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. She is also the Founding Co-Director of EqualHealth, an organization that aims to inspire and support the development of Haiti’s next generation of healthcare leaders. In 2015, Dr. Morse helped to found the Social Medicine Consortium, a global coalition of over 450 people representing over 50 universities and organizations in twelve countries, which seeks to address the miseducation of health professionals. 

• Clinical Excellence for Nurse Practitioners (NPs) and Physician Assistants (PAs): Meredith K. Wold, PA-C, the Supervisor of Advanced Practice Clinicians at HealthPartners Medical Group, which includes 20 nurse practitioners and physician assistants, at Regions Hospital in St. Paul, Minnesota. She is also the co-founder and co-curriculum director for the HealthPartners Hospital Medicine APC  Fellowship Program. Under Ms. Wold’s leadership, the fellowship program offers a clear curriculum that exposes key clinical scenarios and specialties crucial to hospital medicine, preparing new NPs and PAs to contribute immediately to team-based care upon completion of the fellowship.

• Outstanding Service in Hospital Medicine: Flora Kisuule, MD, MPH, SFHM, Assistant Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the Vice Chair for Clinical Operations for the Department of Medicine at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. 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 percent nationwide and reduced hospital-acquired conditions at Hopkins Bayview to the best of the 4 regional Hopkins Health System hospitals.

• Research: Teryl K. Nuckols, MD, MSHS, FHM, a hospitalist and the Director of General Internal Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. She also serves as Associate Professor of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a Health Services Researcher at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica. Dr. Nuckols was previously the Principal Investigator on two R01 research grants from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the recipient of a K08 Career Development Award. She has evaluated clinical practice guidelines on behalf of SHM as well as policymakers in California and Australia, and her work has led to over 30 leading peer-reviewed publications.

• Teaching: Jennifer O’Toole, MD, MEd, a med-peds hospitalist at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medicine Center and University of Cincinnati Medical Center. She serves as the Director of the Combined Internal Medicine and Pediatrics Residency Program and 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 Bootcamp for early career faculty members and fellows in the Division of Hospital Medicine.

• Excellence in Management in Hospital Medicine: Maria Novelero, MA, MPA, the Associate Chair for the Administration of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, served as the Administrator of the UCSF Division of Hospital Medicine from 2005-2017. In this role, she managed its expansion from a 20-physician division to an 80-physician division. Ms. Novelero created a structure to build and manage 10 different hospitalist-run services and established and co-chaired the Department of Hospital Medicine’s High-Value Care Committee. Their work led to tangible value improvements, such as a 14% reduction in direct costs and a first-ever positive net margin for the medical service.

• Teamwork Award in Quality Improvement: Johns Hopkins Health System High-Value Care Committee: The Johns Hopkins Health System High-Value Care Committee was created to operationalize initiatives across all Johns Hopkins six hospitals and Johns Hopkins Community Physicians. Initiatives directed by the committee ​have included reducing inappropriate testing for Clostridium difficile, folate testing for anemia, and duplicative imaging exams, among others. In 18 months since inception, the committee reduced charges to patients and payers by more than $3 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.

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