Biography
Throughout my career at UNM I have been sought to provide outstanding care and to develop the programs and systems that will increasingly enable this care to be delivered. Over the past ten years, I have increasingly focused on the strategy, design, implementation, and optimization of processes and programs to support providers, patients, and the UNM HSC mission.
These efforts coincide with the ACGME core competency of Systems Based Practices. As such, the advising, onboarding and teaching of medical students, residents, fellows, and faculty-each with a different set of expectations-has been an especially rewarding experience.
Presently, I apply myself within the Office of Population Health Management to develop our abilities within a Value Based Care model of healthcare delivery and reimbursement. As Physician Lead for the UNM Team Health and LoboHealth partnership, I collaborate with UNM faculty, staff, and administrative leadership to apply population health concepts for the benefit of our employees. Importantly, I collaborate with community partners, such as First Choice Community Healthcare, on similar efforts. I oversee the work of meeting federal ambulatory quality program requirements and am responsible for the quality and risk adjustment efforts required of our value based contracts.
Previously, I led institution wide implementations of new functionalities within the electronic medical record as one of the Chief Medical Informatics Officer (CMIO) for UNMH. In this role, I led the Mission Excellence: IT sub-committee which was tasked with improving provider ease of practice as it relates to the use of technology.
Major initiatives completed in the CMIO role include an institution wide electronic patient hand-off report (CACHE), presently accessed over ten thousand times each month, and a workflow based method for creating structured clinical documentation (Dynamic Documentation). I also led the initial design and deployment of the health system solution for secure clinical messaging (TigerConnect).
Additionally, I served as the IT liaison for numerous quality and patient safety initiatives across UNMH and UNM-SOM with usability-defined as a fast and satisfying end use experience - as a major priority.
With a special interest in international medicine, I served as chairperson of the Child Health International Program Committee for twelve years. I am proud of this program which supports resident physician rotations in the developing world through a $100,000 endowment and ongoing support from the New Mexico Pediatric Society.
As a Pediatric Hospitalist, I have been responsible for all aspects of acute and chronic general pediatric inpatient care. For the past several years I have focused on providing procedural sedation services to children in the inpatient and outpatient setting. Maintaining my connection with patients and caregivers has been essential for sustaining my interest, enthusiasm, and dedication to the important and difficult work that we do.
As Medical Director of the 34 bed General Pediatrics Unit, I provided leadership in all aspects of patient care and served as the physician lead for numerous project - always seeking to make effective and lasting changes.
As Section Head of Pediatric Hospitalist Medicine I worked to develop a sustainable pediatric hospitalist model and directed the hiring and support of eleven new faculty.