Quarterly News -- Spring
Mark Cullen, MD reports to you the quarterly news for Spring
Mark Cullen, MD
In a few weeks I will be marking the first anniversary of my arrival here at Stanford. I don’t know whether it’s because of that or despite it, but DGMD today is a vastly different Division from the one I found when I arrived—just look around these pages! And even bigger changes lurk on the horizon.
I’m sure by now everyone is aware that our two premier primary care clinics, IMC and SMG, are merging in July to become the new Stanford Internal Medicine or SIM. With expanded space at Blake-Wilbur during the Hoover renovations, the West side of the second floor will be home of our vibrant and growing faculty practice. The East side will house the resident IM longitudinal clinics in the afternoon, with up to 9 residents and 4 attendings per session. In the morning the East side will be used for a variety of specialty clinics, including geriatrics, syncope and medical obesity clinics; in the future travel medicine, occupational medicine and allergy are expected to evolve as well.
In June the Clinical Excellence Research Center will begin operations with the arrival of its inaugural chief-- an announcement of this icon of health delivery reform is imminent!. He and his assistants will be housed with GMD academic faculty and staff in MSOB. It is anticipated this unit will become a centerpiece for efforts to redesign care at Stanford, as well as the study of health care finance and delivery systems more broadly.
Thankfully DGMD is now in a stronger position to support this effort than ever. For one thing, many of our Division faculty have already been extremely active in the QI/QA efforts to date. Adding further capabilities, our Quantitative Sciences Unit (QSU) out at 1070 Arastradero continues to expand both in capability and scope both on the data management and the analytic side; a second programmer is being recruited even as plans proceed to recruit a third member of the statistical faculty.
And if these sea-changes were not enough, recruitment continues in many parts of the DGMD faculty. We have just learned that Dr. Kavitha Ramchandran, a newly trained palliative care specialist and oncologist, will be joining the Palliative Care group at Stanford in the summer. Demand for expanded clinical and educational services are also pressing in Geriatrics at Stanford, where we plan soon to open a search. This, in addition to the two active searches for academic faculty to join DGMD to bolster our emerging strengths in the study of the causes for and remedy of US and global health disparities. Candidates of breathtaking caliber are coming through now almost weekly, as you should know from all the special seminars we are hosting!
So hold onto your hats. If you thought the first year was tumultuous you haven’t seen anything yet!