WASHINGTON (July 22, 2013) — The GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences is pleased to announce the establishment of the Office of Clinical Practice Innovation. The new office will serve as the organizational home for developing and evaluating clinical interventions to improve medical care. This new initiative will provide increased knowledge and understanding of structure, processes, and effects of health services for individuals and populations.
“Through this new initiative, we hope to unite entities across campus and beyond to spur clinical practice innovation. Our goal is that outcomes from our research will not only serve and improve processes within our own clinical entities at GW, but will become benchmarks for medical institutions across the country,” said Jesse Pines, M.D., director of the new Office of Clinical Practice Innovation. For example, Pines and his team are working on proposals that will determine how to better engage patients in quality and safety improvement and are studying new innovations, like clinical decision units, as an example, introduced in the Washington, D.C. region, and how they have impacted acute care delivery.
The main goals of the Office of Clinical Practice Innovation are to:
- Develop, implement, and evaluate clinical initiatives, new practice models, and research to improve the quality and value of health care.
- Spur clinical practice innovation among physicians through collaboration with organizations, including Children’s National Medical Center, Kaiser Permanente Mid-Atlantic, the University of North Carolina, the National Association for Health Care Quality, and others in order to conduct research and introduce novel health care interventions.
- Work within GW to develop new initiatives that enhance GW funding and collaborations.
“This new initiative represents a bold commitment to finding new ways to improve the health care system that we know today,” said Jeffrey S. Akman, M.D., vice president for health affairs and dean, GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences. “By leveraging our existing partnerships and embarking on collaborations with other, like-minded research institutions, we believe that we will make a positive difference for patients and health care providers.”
The new office will employ assets within GW, including EMR systems used by our own clinical partners, and develop a data infrastructure to facilitate the study of local clinical delivery initiatives at GW, as well as work with local partners. Additionally, the GW Office of Technology Transfer will work to facilitate the development of new clinical innovations.
The office will also develop a Clinical Practice Innovation fellowship program for physicians and other providers.
