Now is the Time

TIME to CULTIVATE

New Leaders

SIDM is made up of clinicians, researchers, quality leaders, patients, and families who are committed to improving diagnostic quality. But we know that support and mentorship in diagnostic research, education, and clinical practice is key to creating a culture of diagnostic quality. The SIDM Fellowship in Diagnostic Excellence program helps researchers, educators, informaticists, and quality leaders build their expertise and engagement in the field of diagnostic quality and safety. This year’s Fellows are working on projects that examine bias, stewardship of resources, communication, and medical errors through the lens of improving diagnostic quality and safety. Our previous fellows have established themselves as leaders in the diagnostic quality movement, producing peer-reviewed research, and implementing innovations in their home institutions.

2019 SIDM Fellows. Back: Gopi Astik, Grant Shafer, Julie Wright. Front: Paul Bergl (Director of Fellowship program), Irit Rachel Rasooly, Rebecca Ojo, Verity Elizabeth Schaye. Not pictured: Ali Saber Tehrani

2020 FELLOWS

Justin Choi, MD, hospitalist and clinician-researcher, Weill Cornell Medical College PROJECT: Understanding group decision-making processes and the biases in the approach to diagnostic decisions of general medicine teams in teaching hospitals through ethnography, as well as developing a conceptual model to understand what factors influence teams’ diagnoses.

Yasaman Fatemi, MD, pediatric infectious diseases fellow, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Dr. Fatemi is working towards a Master’s of Science in Health Policy with a concentration in Healthcare Quality & Safety as part of her fellowship within the Center for Healthcare Improvement and Patient Safety, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania PROJECT: Developing curricula and assessment tools to understand and improve diagnostic stewardship, i.e. the appropriate utilization of diagnostic tests, and its effect on diagnostic errors.

Ayodele McClenney, BSCE, JD, director of business development and strategic partnerships, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Healthcare Quality, Center for Diagnostic Excellence PROJECT: Establishing Tele-Dizzy consultation, a quality improvement program using video-oculography goggles to improve diagnosis of acute dizziness and stroke, and assessing its impact at Howard County General and Sibley Memorial hospitals.

Rajasekhara Mummadi, MD, chief of quality and population health and gastroenterologist, Northwest Permanente, P.C. PROJECT: Studying the implementation and effectiveness of communication of critical imaging results directly to patients from the Kaiser Permanente Central SureNet monitoring system.

Varun Phadke, MD, assistant professor, Division of Infectious Diseases, Emory University School of Medicine PROJECT: Developing a framework for the cognitive processes used by subspecialists in patient care as they make diagnoses, and developing metrics of consultative care that could be used for assessment and remediation of learners, quality improvement, and a more cohesive understanding of errors.

Lisa Schwartz, MD, MSc, assistant clinical professor and hospitalist, Internal Medicine Teaching Service, NYU Langone Hospital - Brooklyn. PROJECT: Developing a Diagnostic Certainty Tool within the medical record to track diagnostic reasoning and ultimately educating users on diagnostic uncertainty, missed diagnoses, delayed diagnoses, and diagnostic error.

Viralkumar Vaghani, MBBS, MPH, MS, healthcare informatics analyst, Center for Innovations in Quality, Effectiveness, and Safety, Baylor College of Medicine and Michael E. DeBakey Veteran Affairs (VA) Medical Center PROJECT: Developing, testing, and validating SaferDx Trigger Tool Framework based e-trigger algorithms using EHR data to identify missed opportunities to diagnose certain conditions in primary care.