Department of Medicine at the
University of
Colorado Denver
First Quarter 2006 News
New Housestaff Training Program Director - I am very pleased to announce that Suzanne Brandenburg, MD has accepted the position as the Department’s Housestaff Training Program Director effective immediately. Suzanne has been closely involved in the day-to-day administration of our housestaff program as the Associate Director for many years. Suzanne has significant national involvement in housestaff education in her role as Vice-Chair of the Association of Program Directors of Internal Medicine Accreditation Committee and as a member of the Society of General Internal Medicine’s Reforming Residency Task Force. Suzanne is the Principal Investigator on the Department’s Residency Training in Primary Care HRSA grant and is the author of several articles dealing with houseofficer education. Suzanne is an Associate Professor of Medicine, a member of Alpha Omega Alpha and a former Chief Medical Resident in our Housestaff Training Program. Bill Kaehny, who has served as our Program Director for 14 years, is currently the Chief of the Denver VA Medical Service. Dr. Kaehny will continue his involvement with our program as an Associate Program Director joining current Associate Directors Drs. Jeff Glasheen and Karen Chacko. Collectively, Drs. Brandenburg, Kaehny, Glasheen and Chacko represent 30 years of excellent Housestaff Program management experience.
Gifts to the Department - The Department has been exceptionally fortunate to have been the recipient of several gifts over the past 6 months. Most recently, Jerome H. Kern and Mary Rossick Kern donated 1.5 $M and pledged another 1.5 $M to support our Endocrinology Division’s Thyroid Tumor Center. A 2 $M Mary Rossick Kern and Jerome H. Kern Endowed Chair in Thyroid Tumor Research will be established and Dr. Bryan Haugen is the recipient of this Chair. The remaining 1 $M will go toward recruitment of qualified personnel and laboratory equipment and support for Dr. Haugen’s research efforts. The Hewitt Family Foundation’s donation of1 $M to the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology (Dr. Hugo Rosen) to support hepatitis C research and Karen and Steven Leaffer’s donation of $600,000 to The Women’s Health Research Center (Drs. Judith Regensteiner and JoAnn Lindenfeld) to support the efforts of this Center were detailed in our last report. We are enormously appreciative of the generosity of the Hewitt Foundation, the Kern’s and the Leaffer’s in their support of our programs.
Kudos - Several members of the Department have recently received significant recognition. Chip Ridgway (Endocrinology), Ted Eickhoff (Infectious Diseases) and Clifford Zwillich (VA/Pulmonary) were elected to be a “Masters” of the American College of Physicians and Joel Levine (Gastroenterology/Hepatology) has been elected to be Chair-elect of the Board of Regents for the American College of Physicians. Larry Feinberg (General Internal Medicine) was awarded the “Laureate Award” of the Colorado Chapter of the American College of Physician which is the highest honor the chapter can bestow. Dr. Feinberg was recognized as the consummate role model of a highly skilled, compassionate internist with acknowledged excellence and peer approval in internal medicine. Dr. Todd Bull of our Pulmonary/Critical Care Division was the recipient of this year’s “Outstanding Teacher Award” by the Department of Medicine Housestaff. Andy Kramer, Head of the Division of Health Care Policy and Research, was awarded one of ten of the highly competitive CMS Master Contractors Status Awards. Drs. Moshe Levi (Renal), Raphael Nemenoff (Renal), Maggie Weirman (Endocrinology) and Gail Eckhardt (Medical Oncology) were recently appointed to three year positions on NIH Study Sections. Wendee Gozansky (Geriatrics) recently received the Women’s Health Research Award from the Foundation of Women’s Wellness.
New Department Clinical and Research Benchmarks - Due to the efforts of its outstanding faculty, the Department established new benchmarks for research funding (75 $M) and clinical collections (21 $M) in the past year.
The 2006 Q1 Featured Program is Palliative Care-Clinical Services: The Palliative Care Consult Service at UCH - Five faculty physicians, all with significant hospice and palliative care experience, four of whom have American Board of Hospice and Palliative Medicine certification, initiated the UCH Palliative Care (PC) Consult Service in July 2000 on an ad hoc basis. Since the addition of a hospital-supported Advanced Practice Nurse (Harri Brackett, RN, MS) in July 2005, the palliative care consult service has increased in volume from 4 – 5 new consults per month prior to July 2005 to ~30 new consults per month over the last several months. Third year internal medicine residents participate in the PC consult service as a component of their required medicine consult rotation. Attending physicians include: Jean Kutner, MD, MSPH, David Bekelman, MD, MPH and Jeanie Youngwerth, MD (Division of General Internal Medicine), Cari Levy, MD and Stacy Fischer, MD (Division of Health Care Policy and Research), Paul Seligman, MD (Division of Hematology), and David Nowels, MD, MPH (Department of Family Medicine). David Bekelman, MD, MPH, is currently working with Brian Lowes, MD (Division of Cardiology) to develop a supportive care clinic to complement the care provided to patients in the UCH Heart Failure Clinic.
The Division of General Internal Medicine is home to the nation’s only hospice/palliative care research network, the Population-based Palliative Care Research Network (PoPCRN – www.uchsc.edu/popcrn). The Population-based Palliative Care Research Network (PoPCRN) consists of more than 225 hospices and permits the conduct of multi-site studies of end-of-life care, addressing operational as well as clinical issues. PoPCRN was developed in 1998 by the current GIM Division Head, Jean S. Kutner, MD, MSPH. PoPCRN was recipient of a prestigious 2002 Circle of Life Award for Innovation in End-of-Life Care, sponsored by the American Hospital Association in conjunction with several other organizations. PoPCRN is currently supported by a variety of private and federal sources including the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, the National Cancer Institute, and funds granted by the State of Colorado Office of the Attorney General which are specifically designated for provision of infrastructure support for PoPCRN through 2010. In addition to PoPCRN-based studies, David Bekelman, MD, MPH, has an active research program focusing on palliative care for patients with advanced heart failure.
