Kabir Yadav, MDCM, MS, MSHS, associate professor of emergency medicine at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, was named as one of the first board-certified clinical informaticians in the country.
“With health care reform, there is a need to measure quality, as well as compliance with certain goals and objectives, to provide quality care at a reasonable cost,” said Yadav. “Quality measurements, along with the government mandate for electronic medical records to have clinical decision support, have reinforced the need for physicians who specialize in informatics.”
Yadav, who has more than eight years of research experience in improving medical decision making, is among 400-plus physicians nationwide to pass the first ever board certification exam in the new sub specialty of clinical informatics. It is the first new medical specialty to be established in over 20 years and demonstrates the growing importance and demand for physicians with professional expertise in informatics.
Physicians with this new board certification work as academic faculty, chief medical information officers in health care organizations, program managers supporting contractors in government agencies, and with software vendors of health information technology (IT) solutions. This new certification requires a current board certification in a clinical specialty, current valid state license to practice medicine, successfully passing the board examination, and significant work in health IT during the past few years.
With an expertise in informatics, Yadav hopes to continue his research to find ways to not just “check the box” with new health care reform requirements, but to meet these new requirements in ways that improve physicians’ work and enhance patient safety. His research aims to help reduce medical errors and make working with electronic health records easier.
He credits his KL2 mentored career development award from the Clinical and Translational Science Institute at Children’s National (CTSI-CN), a partnership with GW, for helping him qualify to sit for the boards.
Yadav will formally receive his clinical informatics certification from the American Board of Preventive Medicine in January 2014.
