Speaker:
William M. Gregg, MD, MS, MPH

Title:
Improving Care for Patients with Chronic Conditions: An Engineering Approach

Abstract:
Despite the strong recommendations from the 2001 IOM report “Crossing the Quality Chasm”, improvements in health care quality have been modest and cost has continued to rise. Improvements in quality and safety in inpatient care have not translated easily to the fragmented outpatient system where the majority of care is provided.  Our talk will review the unique challenges in improving outpatient care and present an engineering approach to the problem currently underway at Vanderbilt.  Our methodology seeks to develop a system based on continuous improvement and data driven resource allocation that is self-correcting, patient centric and cost efficient. Successes, challenges and preliminary results are presented. 

Bio:
Dr. Gregg is a practicing general internist and Assistant Professor in Biomedical Informatics and Medicine at Vanderbilt University. Dr. Gregg received his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Georgia Tech and his MD degree from the University of Miami-Miller School of Medicine. After finishing his internal medicine residency at Vanderbilt, he earned a Master’s degree in Biomedical Informatics as an NLM fellow and a Master’s in Public Health as a VA Quality Scholar’s Fellow.

Dr. Gregg’s research is primarily focused on the intersection between chronic disease care, quality improvement and biomedical informatics. As Co-Director of the Vanderbilt Center for Health Promotion and Disease Management he leads several projects in population level patient management involving more than 10,000 patients. In his role as Director of Population Health Informatics, he has led the development of the software underpinning Vanderbilt’s Care Coordination system – My Health Team at Vanderbilt. He is also the primary inventor of Vanderbilt’s chronic disease tracking system and has implemented the system for more than 10 different conditions/diseases across more than 50,000 patients.