Dear Colleagues,
Happy New Year! I hope you all enjoyed a festive and happy holiday season.
As we have come to the end of 2023 and are at the start of a new year, I would like to reflect on the many areas of growth members of our department worked to achieve over the past year and highlight some of our goals for 2024.
New division leadership
Over the past year, we welcomed four new division chiefs, Dr. Deborah Blazey-Martin (General Internal Medicine), who also serves as vice chair for Ambulatory Affairs, Dr. Vaikom Mahadevan (Cardiology), Dr. Allan Walkey (Health Systems Science), and Dr. Christine Bielick Kotkowski (Medicine-Pediatrics), who was also recently appointed to serve as physician co-chair of the Critical Care Committee (C3). We also welcomed a new clinical chief, Dr. Ken Ralto (Renal). Additionally, Dr. Greg Leslie is currently serving as interim division chief in addition to his role as clinical chief of Hospital Medicine.
Key strengths
- Innovative initiatives for improving discharge orders before noon in Hospital Medicine and Pulmonology have had a significant impact. Hospital Medicine is now averaging over 35% and Pulmonology is averaging over 34% on discharge orders before noon. Our clinical enterprises have seen length-of-stay (LOS) reductions in Bone Marrow Transplant, Hospital Medicine-Internal Medicine, Liver Transplant, and Pulmonology. The largest improvement in LOS reduction was in Hospital Medicine with a .77-day decrease.
- Our research enterprises continue to grow. Funding increased to $83,079,043. This is over a 35% increase in total funding and over a 57% increase in NIH funding over the last fiscal year.
- Our Clinical Research Core received over 42 official requests and is currently working on 21 active studies from 6 divisions.
- Press Ganey survey results from our clinical employees showed that our department has strength in the areas of engagement, quality and safety, teamwork, and diversity and inclusion.
- 15 divisions have completed session 1 and 12 divisions have completed session 2 of the Department of Medicine-sponsored Unconscious Bias training. Drop-in sessions are now being offered for those who were unable to attend and newly joined faculty and staff.
- Outstanding fellowship match where 12 of our 22 graduating Internal Medicine categorical residents elected to stay at UMass for fellowships including in Cardiovascular Medicine, Gastroenterology, Pulmonary and Critical Care, and Hematology/Oncology.
More good things to come
In 2024, we will welcome two additional chiefs with this month’s arrival of Dr. Anil Chandraker (Renal Medicine) and Dr. David Dosa (Geriatrics), who will join us in the spring.
With nearly 300 funding proposals submitted in 2023 (up from 256 in 2022), we anticipate our research enterprises will continue to grow in 2024!
Indeed, we have much to be proud of and celebrate from this past year, and there is still much to be done as we move into the next year.
More work to do
Among our many goals and objectives, we will
- Work to increase new patient access and ambulatory growth initiatives
- Continue to promote team-based care culture
- Continue our efforts in Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging through faculty and staff training in cultural awareness and unconscious bias.
- Continue to strengthen academic partnerships through pipeline programs like PRISM
Other highlights for the month of January
This month in our Chair’s Spotlight, we are featuring Dr. Shaoguang Li, a scientist and professor of medicine in the Division of Hematology/Oncology. We recently spoke with Dr. Li to learn more about how he is expanding his laboratory’s focus to include a new area of research utilizing emerging artificial intelligence technologies to investigate and develop diagnostics and therapies that are more effective in the treatment of blood cancers. Read Dr. Li’s feature.
Mark your calendars for our Winter Department of Medicine Town Hall on Monday, January 22 at noon.
Please also watch for announcements and take some time to check out the events that UMass Chan has planned in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Day.
On behalf of the entire Department of Medicine leadership team, I continue to be appreciative of the faculty and staff who make our department successful. I look forward to our work together in 2024!
Sincerely,
Dave
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