Science Core

Urmimala Sarkar, MD, MPH

Associate Professor

UCSF School of Medicine, Department of Medicine

Dr. Urmimala Sarkar is the Principal Investigator of ASCENT and serves as the Administrative Core Lead, Co-Lead on Project 2, and Co-Investigator on Project 3. Dr. Sarkar is Associate Professor of Medicine at UCSF in the Division of General Internal Medicine and a primary care physician at San Francisco General Hospital's Richard H. Fine People's Clinic. Dr. Sarkar’s research focuses on (1) patient safety in outpatient settings, including adverse drug events, missed and delayed diagnosis, and failures of treatment monitoring, (2) health information technology and social media to improve the safety and quality of outpatient care, and (3) implementation of evidence-based innovations in real-world, safety-net care settings.

Dr. Sarkar is committed to enhancing health information technology approaches to improve primary care and ameliorate disparities in vulnerable populations, through the health-literacy-sensitive, patient-centered approaches such as co-development and usability testing, in partnership with technology development experts. Her current work applies design thinking and interdisciplinary, iterative approaches to characterize and address safety gaps in outpatient settings.

 

Dhruv Kazi, MD, MPH

Assistant Professor

Dr. Dhruv Kazi is an Assistant Professor at UCSF and an ASCENT Co-Investigator. Dr. Kazi is a general cardiologist and cardiovascular health economist interested in understanding and improving long-term clinical outcomes among patients with cardiovascular disease in the United States and overseas. His recent work has involved the evaluation of novel diagnostic approaches, medical devises, drug therapy and genetic testing. The outcomes of this work have included the creation of discrete-time Markov modeling, as well as the use of advanced statistical techniques for large observational datasets (Medicare, Kaiser, National Inpatient Sample). Dr. Kazi co-founded heartMAP – a low-cost, data-driven program focused on improving medication adherence among low-literacy patients with advanced cardiovascular disease. He is a senior member of the UCSF-Stanford-UC Berkeley Global Health Economics Consortium, serves as on the American Heart Association’s International Committee, and is an associate editor for Global Heart.

 

Emily Patterson, PhD

Associate Professor

Ohio State University College of Medicine, Health Information Management and Systems

Dr. Patterson contributes to the ASCENT Science Core by offering her expertise in employing population-based strategies with electronic health data and organizational interventions to increase system resilience and improve patient safety. She has served as scientific advisor on using human factors engineering to improve patient safety for The Joint Commission, the National Board of Medical Examiners, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, ECRI, and the Society of Hospital Medicine. Dr. Patterson is an Associate Professor of Health Information Management and Systems and the Director of the Leverage Point Engineering (LePE) Laboratory at the College of Medicine at Ohio State University. Her research focuses on both health informatics and communication during transitions of care.

 

Eric Vittinghoff, PhD, MPH

Professor

UCSF School of Medicine, Epidemiology & Biostatistics

Dr. Vittinghoff is a Co-Investigator for ASCENT and provides state-of-the-art statistical support, intellectual input, and advice on the quantitative evaluation designs for all three projects. Dr. Vittinghoff is a Professor in the UCSF Division of Biostatistics and first author of a widely used textbook entitled Regression Methods in Biostatistics. He has extensive experience in the analysis of observational data and has co-authored over 350 peer-reviewed publications, with a particular focus on chronic disease research. Along with providing cutting-edge statistical expertise, Dr. Vittinghoff provides statistical mentoring.

 

Margaret Handley, PhD, MPH

Associate Professor

UCSF School of Medicine, Epidemiology & Biostatistics

 

 

Paul Schulman, PhD

Professor

Mills College, Department of Government

 

Valy Fontil, MD, MAS

Assistant Professor

Dr. Valy Fontil is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at UCSF, and the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations at the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. Dr. Fontil is an ASCENT Co-Investigator. He is committed to using multiple research methodologies to study proactive clinical approaches for disease prevention and cardiovascular risk reduction in underserved populations vulnerable to health disparities. As a health services researcher and implementation scientist, his current work is focused on studying, and implementing hypertension management interventions to improve population health and reduce health disparities. Some of his most recent research work has included: (1) development and validation of a computer microsimulation model to predict what clinical and/or policy interventions might work best for improving hypertension control; and (2) implementation of a disease management program for hypertension in safety-net clinics throughout San Francisco county. Dr. Fontil's work also focuses on leveraging mobile health information technology in practice-based interventions at healthcare safety-net institutions. He is committed to co-development and validation of digital health products and mobile devices for monitoring and management of chronic diseases, particularly in safety-net clinical settings.


Project 1: Improving management of subcritical test results 

Liz Goldman, MD

Associate Professor

UCSF School of Medicine, Department of Medicine

Dr. Goldman the Co-Lead on Project 1. She is a practicing internist at Zuckerberg San Francisco General where she supervises residents, has an outpatient primary care clinic, and attends on the inpatient service. Her research and policy work focuses on improving and transforming health systems for underserved diverse populations. She has developed and implemented systems innovations that improve care transitions, care coordination efforts across medical and behavioral health settings, and value of care, and has significant experience in the field of quality measurement. In addition to her implementation science training and experience, Dr. Goldman has a leadership role in the San Francisco Health Network, where she is the Quality and Reporting Liaison between the ambulatory medical record team, Information Systems reporting teams, and the Quality Leadership in the San Francisco Health Network and is a primary care consultant to the inpatient psychiatrists and outpatient psychiatric teams at UCSF working in the San Francisco Health Network.

Raman Khanna, MD, MAS

Assistant Professor

UCSF School of Medicine, Department of Medicine

Dr. Khanna co-leads Test Results Management work, provides technical direction and supervision, and leads test design iterations for ASCENT. He is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Hospital Medicine at UCSF and Physician Lead for Inpatient Informatics at UCSF Medical Center. Raman's work centers on the design and implementation of information technology applications in health care. He has an appointment in the Center for Digital Health Innovation (CDHI) where he works primarily on CareWeb, a project to transform clinical communication within and between providers and their teams. He is also currently active in the EMERGE project, which seeks to unify diverse information streams in a single intricate visualization to prevent harms in the ICU. For his clinical time he attends on the Medicine Teaching services.

Jonathan Lee, MD

Clinical Fellow

UCSF School of Medicine, Department of Medicine

Jonathan Lee is a Primary Care Research Fellow and an internist at Mount Zion. His research interests include measuring and improving healthcare quality through processes and outcomes of care. As part of ASCENT, Jonathan is studying the follow-up of incidental pulmonary nodules with the goal of improving appropriate follow-up and patient care.

Alex Rybkin, MD

Associate Professor

UCSF School of Medicine, Department of Radiology

Dr. Rybkin is a significant contributor to Project 1. He is an Associate Clinical Professor in the Department of Radiology at SFGH and UCSF, and previously served as Co-Director of the Body Imaging/Women’s Imaging Fellowship and interim Chief in the Department of Radiology at SFGH. Dr. Rybkin’s research program focuses on developing internet applications in Radiology. His overall research goal is to use cutting-edge technology to streamline processes in the Department of Radiology by improving efficiency, profitability, and quality of patient care. Dr. Rybkin's research includes: eReferral for Radiology, which is a computerized order entry system where physicians request specialist consultations at SFGH; radiologue (eWhiteboard), which is a web application for multidirectional information exchange in the Department of Radiology; and SFGHrad.com, which is an online departmental scheduling application


Project 2: Managing high-risk conditions 

Urmimala Sarkar, MD, MPH

Co-Lead

George Su, MD

Associate Professor

UCSF School of Medicine, Department of Medicine

 

 

Claire Horton, MD, MPH

Associate Professor

UCSF School of Medicine, Department of Medicine

 

 

 

Jinoos Yazdany, MD, MPH

Associate Professor

UCSF School of Medicine, Department of Medicine

Dr. Jinoos Yazdany, MD, MPH, is Associate Professor of Medicine and the Robert L. Kroc Endowed Chair in Rheumatic and Connective Tissue Diseases at the University of California, San Francisco. In addition to leading measure development projects for the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) and spearheading research efforts related to quality measure development, she is Chair of the Research Committee for the ACR's national electronic-medical record (EMR) based registry, RISE. Her research group focuses on understanding the quality and safety of health care for patients with chronic diseases using large datasets, including EMR data, administrative data, and patient-reported data.


Project 3: Implementing UMS 

Dean Schillinger, MD

Professor

UCSF School of Medicine, Department of Medicine

 

 

David Woods, PharmD

Assistant Dean, Assistant Professor

UCSF School of Pharmacy, Department of Clinical Pharmacy

Dr. David Woods is the Co-Lead for Project 3, lending his advice and leadership in the problem analysis, implementation, and evaluation phases of the project. Dr. Woods is the Chief Pharmacy Officer for the San Francisco Department of Public Health as well as Assistant Dean and Assistant Professor at the UCSF School of Pharmacy. In his role as Chief Pharmacy Officer, he supports efforts to improve safety for outpatients. As an administrator, he is responsible for clinical care, quality improvement, budgeting, compliance, and overall leadership for a large network of pharmacies. Additionally, as Assistant Dean of Pharmacy at UCSF, Dr. Woods works with area directors of advance pharmacy practice programs in providing administrative support, mentoring and instruction to students and faculty members.

Elaine Khoong, MD, MS

Resident Physician

UCSF School of Medicine, Department of Medicine

Elaine Khoong is an internal medicine resident at UCSF in the primary care program based at Zuckerberg San Francisco General. As part of Project 3, she is working on analyzing the barriers for implementation of UMS across all the SFDPH pharmacies. Elaine is interested in improving delivery of cost-effective care in underserved settings by encouraging dissemination & implementation of evidence-based interventions.

Swati Patel, PharmD

Supervising Pharmacist

Zuckerberg San Francisco General Outpatient Pharmac

Sachi Oshima

Research Assistant and Medical Scribe

Zuckerberg San Francisco General Richard H. Fine People's Clinic

Sachi Oshima is a medical scribe at the San Francisco General Hospital Richard H. Fine People's Clinic and a volunteer for ASCENT, focused on data collection for Project 3. She has a BA in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology from Harvard University and is currently finishing her post-bacc at UC Berkeley in preparation for applying to medical school.



Expert Contributors

Kathryn McDonald, MM/MBA

Kathy McDonald provides her expertise on measures and interventions to achieve evidence-based patient-centered healthcare quality and patient safety to the ASCENT projects. She is the executive director of Stanford University's Center for Health Policy (CHP) and the Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research (PCOR), as well as associate director of the Stanford-UCSF Evidence-based Practice Center (with RAND). McDonald has served as a project director and principal investigator on a number of research projects at the Stanford School of Medicine, including the development and ongoing enhancement of the Quality and Patient Safety Indicators for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Additionally, she served on the Institute of Medicine Committee that produced Measuring What Matters: Pediatric and Adolescent Health and Health Care, and more recently the IOM Committee on Diagnostic Errors in Health Care.