The AHRQ Safety Program for Telemedicine is led by NORC at the University of Chicago (NORC), the Johns Hopkins Medicine Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality (JHAI), and Baylor College of Medicine and is funded and guided by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
The AHRQ Safety Program for Telemedicine provides practices with evidence-based patient safety practices, individualized expert coaching, and technical assistance from physician subject matter experts to support practices in the following areas:
This program will involve two cohorts of healthcare professionals who utilize telemedicine as a care delivery model. The first cohort, focused on improving the cancer diagnostic process, will include telehealth practices in adult and family primary care, gynecology, and community-based health clinics who regularly provide cancer diagnoses. The cancer diagnostic process cohort will begin in Fall 2023 and is currently accepting applications. The second cohort, focused on antibiotic use, will include a diversity of primary care practices and begin recruitment in December 2023.
Hardeep Singh, M.D., M.P.H., is professor of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, staff physician at Michael E. DeBakey Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center, and chief of health policy, quality and informatics program at the Houston VA Center for Innovation in Quality, Effectiveness, and Safety. He co-developed national VA policy on diagnostic test results communication, co-chaired the National Quality Forum committee on health information technology safety measurement recommendations, and co-developed "ONC SAFER Guides" providing national recommendations for safe electronic health record (EHR) use. Currently, he is working on an active AHRQ R01 grant to develop novel strategies to measure diagnostic errors through EHR-based algorithms. He also leads a Virtual Breakthrough Series Collaborative at 12 VA facilities using the SAFER TRACKS Intervention to reduce delays in followup of cancer-related abnormal test results. In a separate project, he is developing electronic clinical quality measures for cancer diagnosis. Dr. Singh is the principal investigator for the Cancer Diagnostic Process cohort.
Sara Keller, M.D., M.P.H., M.S.P.H. is an assistant professor in infectious diseases at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where she primarily sees patients at Johns Hopkins Greenspring Station and also attends on the inpatient infectious disease consult service at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. She serves as the medical director of the Johns Hopkins Hospital Outpatient Parenteral Antimicrobial Therapy (OPAT) Service. Dr. Keller graduated from the Duke University School of Medicine in 2007. She completed her master of public health in epidemiology in 2006 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She then completed a residency in internal medicine in the Osler Medical Residency Training Program at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in 2010, a fellowship in infectious diseases at the University of Pennsylvania in 2012, and a fellowship in the University of Pennsylvania Centers for Healthcare Improvement and Patient Safety in 2013. She also completed a master of science in health policy at the University of Pennsylvania in 2013. Dr. Keller is the principal investigator for the Antibiotic Use cohort.
Bradford Winters, M.D., Ph.D., is an ICU intensivist in The Johns Hopkins Hospital surgical intensive care units, which developed the original AHRQ Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program (CUSP) strategy to drive central line-associated bloodstream infection improvement programs. He has supported the AHRQ CUSP for Catheter-Associated Urinary Tract Infections Prevention project and provided CUSP content expertise and education for the “Empower and Educate All Staff on the Science of Safety” program for the U.S. Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery. He served as the principal investigator for the AHRQ ACTION III projects validating the AHRQ Quality Safety Review system software outside of Federal hospital databases and co-led the Society for Critical Care Medicine’s Alarm and Alert Fatigue Task Force as a patient safety threat. Dr. Winters is a co-principal investigator for both the Cancer Diagnostic Process and Antibiotic Use cohorts.
Mark Graber, M.D., FACP, professor emeritus of medicine at Stony Brook University, NY, is the leading authority internationally on diagnostic error and how to address it. He is the founder and president emeritus of the Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine, the annual Diagnostic Error in Medicine conference series, and the journal DIAGNOSIS. In 2014, he received the John M. Eisenberg Award, the Nation’s top honor in patient safety and quality for originating Patient Safety Awareness Week and establishing the new field of diagnostic safety. Dr. Graber is a co-investigator for the Cancer Diagnostic Process cohort.
Andrea Bradford, Ph.D., is a team scientist, licensed psychologist, and associate professor at Baylor College of Medicine. Her main interest is developing programs and tools that address gaps in health services and healthcare quality. In addition to her scientific roles, Dr. Bradford has over a decade of experience as a clinical psychologist embedded in medical specialty settings. She has established two novel integrated health psychology services at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (2010–2016) and Baylor College of Medicine (2016–present). Dr. Bradford has served on the boards of the Society for Health Psychology and the Association of Psychologists in Academic Health Centers and is the incoming editor in chief of the Journal of Clinical Psychology in Medical Settings.
Daniel Murphy, M.D., M.B.A., is an associate professor and board-certified internal medicine physician at Baylor College of Medicine, Department of Medicine, and the Houston Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Center for Innovation in Quality, Effectiveness and Safety (IQuESt). He additionally serves as the chief quality officer for Baylor Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine’s outpatient clinical practice, and as medical director for the Baylor Medicine General Internal Medicine Clinic. His research interests and focus include understanding workflows related to electronic communication and developing electronic “trigger” algorithms that enable detection of delays in diagnosis and treatment.
Pranita Tamma, M.D., M.P.H. is an associate professor of pediatrics in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Director of the Pediatric Antimicrobial Stewardship Program at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. As director of antimicrobial stewardship, she assists clinicians with optimizing the selection of antibiotics to improve patient outcomes while minimizing antibiotic-associated harm. She is the past and present recipient of Federal research funding from the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and AHRQ. Her research focuses on improving our understanding of the mechanisms of gram-negative bacterial resistance, improving available phenotypic and molecular diagnostics to identify gram-negative resistant pathogens, and optimizing therapeutic choices for infections caused by multidrug-resistant gram-negative organisms. Dr. Tamma is a co-investigator for the Antibiotic Use cohort.
Ahmed Hassoon, M.D., M.P.H., PMP, is an assistant scientist of epidemiology and neurology at Johns Hopkins University and is a member of the Armstrong Institute Center for Diagnostic Excellence. He led the development and implementation of Transition of Care Plus program for lung cancer patients to improve care coordination during the transition from systemic therapy to survivorship and organize cancer surveillance activities at Johns Hopkins. He co-directed the National Diagnostic Performance Dashboard at Johns Hopkins. The dashboard is a data analytic tool to provide diagnostic performance assessment using Symptom-Disease Pair Analysis of Diagnostic Error (SPADE) framework. He is also a technical expert in two ongoing AHRQ-funded projects aiming to develop diagnostic errors performance measures, and systematic review of diagnostic errors in emergency medicine.
Alison Laffan, Ph.D., is a principal research scientist in NORC’s Health Sciences Department. She brings more than a decade of experience managing Federal research, evaluation, and coordination projects for AHRQ, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on topics ranging from hospital-acquired conditions (HACs) to dementia, diabetes, and disabilities. Her other projects include managing work with CMS’s Office of Minority Health (CMS OMH) to develop and disseminate resources for providers to reduce health disparities and improve healthcare quality. For AHRQ, she leads a coordinating center responsible for supporting nursing homes by providing tools and resources on best practices on COVID-19 infection control, care, management, and safety and assessing the effectiveness of AHRQ activities to support nursing homes during the pandemic. She holds a Ph.D. in epidemiology for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Kate LeFauve, M.A., has over 25 years of experience managing complex research projects. She has served as project manager for the Connect Cohort Support project for the National Cancer Institute. Prior to this project, LeFauve served as the principal investigator on the National Children’s Study (NCS) Regional Operation Center and associate project director on the NCS Field Support Project.
Carly Parry, Ph.D., M.S.W., is a NORC vice president with over 20 years of expertise in the translation of evidence-based programs into practice. Parry led implementation and training for the nationally recognized Care Transitions Program™. She also led work in cancer care delivery at the National Cancer Institute, closed gaps in care delivery at Kaiser Permanente, and, at the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Center’s (PCORI), headed AHRQ/PCORI Learning Health Systems and workforce development programs. Parry has served as a technical expert informing AHRQ’s Development of the Learning Health System Researcher Core Competencies, as an expert for the National Academy of Medicine’s Roundtable on Value and Science-Driven Health Care, Best Practice Innovation Collaborative: Patients on the Healthcare Team, and a thought leader for cancer, chronic illness, and transitional care initiatives.
Roy Ahn, M.P.H., Sc.D., is vice president in the Public Health Department at NORC at the University of Chicago. He was the project director of one of the evaluation portfolios of Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Health Care Innovation Award portfolios, and currently leads public health projects for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He has worked for 20 years at the intersection of program leadership and research in the areas of health policy, nonprofit/civil society organization management and strategy, and public health innovation. Prior to NORC, he served as the founding associate director of the Division of Global Health & Human Rights in the Massachusetts General Hospital’s Department of Emergency Medicine, where he helped design, implement, and evaluate health innovation programs. He was also assistant professor of emergency medicine at Harvard Medical School. He holds a doctor of science degree from the Harvard School of Public Health.
Prashila Dullabh, M.D., is a vice president and senior fellow at NORC at the University of Chicago. She also directs the NORC Health Implementation Science Center. Dr. Dullabh is a clinician with more than 20 years of experience in healthcare and health services research. Dr. Dullabh has led several technical assistance, evaluation, and strategic projects for Federal agencies and foundations. Her work includes large-scale implementation science projects focused on patient safety. She is co-investigator for a multiyear AHRQ-funded project in collaboration with John Hopkins Medicine focused on antibiotic stewardship. Dr. Dullabh is also involved in other patient safety initiatives including the Maryland Statewide Prevention and Reduction of COVID-19 (SPARC) and the AHRQ National Nursing Home COVID-19 Coordinating Center.