Abstract. Our initiative will extend and expand services in the Division of General Internal Medicine (DGIM) Food pharmacy. The DGIM Food Pharmacy began in August 2019, in partnership with the SF Food Bank and the SF Department of Public Health, with support from the Mt. Zion Health Fund. The Food Pharmacy is a food bank based in DGIM, which provides healthy fruits, vegetables and proteins as well as nutrition education and resources to food insecure patients. In April 2020, in response to the Covid-19 crisis, we added the “DGIM Emergency Food Program." Food insecure patients are given a bag of groceries at the time of their medical appointments through this initiative. Both programs are very successful, distributing 1,303 bags of groceries through February 2021, despite a 6 month hiatus due to Covid-19. It has just been chosen by the UCSF Center for Healthcare Value to be featured on a GME podcast, to share how the Food Pharmacy reduces out-of-pocket expenses for our patients. The Caring Wisely grant will allow us to continue and enhance the DGIM Food Pharmacy, as funding for this program ends on November 30, 2021. The Caring Wisely funding will be instrumental in continuing this important program into 2022, especially at this time of increased need for food during the Covid-19 pandemic. Furthermore, we intend to expand the DGIM Food Pharmacy program by incorporating a culinary medicine curriculum and food demonstrations. Culinary medicine is an evidence-based approach that educates and enables patients to improve their health by teaching about nutritional information and the culinary skills needed to prepare food. We will also create exercise videos for our patients as exercise programs are associated with better health outcomes and medical cost savings (Towne). 

ABSTRACT 

For chronic disease and preventive care management, value-added time for patients includes receiving appropriate reminders for medical testing, undergoing proper testing at correct intervals, receiving interpretation of test results from providers, and receiving just-in-time intervention from providers.  Most UCSF patients receive care from many providers in different specialties, and as a result, these patients frequently have redundant lab tests ordered.  This results in the submission of multiple specimens for overlapping tests within short periods of time or crucial test results being missed, resulting in an inefficient visit.  Even after patients complete testing appropriately, we lack a systematic strategy to ensure proper timing of the clinical appointment.  Before we started a quality improvement project for reducing patients lost to follow-up (LTFU) at UCSF Nephrology clinic, 22% of patients were LTFU.  The majority of the LTFU patients are often the most vulnerable patients leading to inequitable health care delivery.  Lastly, after patients complete their visits, most of our providers lack population information of their panel size, demographics of their patients, appropriateness of care provided, and percentage of patients receiving the best evidence-based care.  The goal of this proposal is to have a 3-pronged approach to improve patient's access to care and equitable healthcare delivery by creating a healthcare journey for all patients that collects remote monitoring data, transferring the data from remote monitoring to generate clinic patient registry, and transforming the patient registry data to a dashboard feedback system to providers for intervention.

Establishing safety of outpatient percutaneous gastrostomy tube placement

PROJECT LEADS:
-Sue Yom, MD – Director of Head and Neck/Thoracic Services, Dept. of Radiation Oncology
-Nicholas Fidelman, MD – Interim Chief of Interventional Radiology, Dept. of Radiology

ABSTRACT

ABSTRACT

Disturbed sleep quality in hospitalized patients is associated with decreased functional status and increased delirium, hospital length of stay, need for ICU care, rate of complications and readmission. Lack of sleep may also affect HCAHPS patient satisfaction scores with hospital environment and medical care, impacting hospital reimbursement and reputation.

PROJECT LEADS: Julia Maheshwari, MD; Steven Hays, MD; Michelle Mourad, MD; Anobel Odisho, MD, MPH; Gina Intinarelli, PhD, MS; Brian Daniel, RCP RRT; Nazmin Shah, RCP RRT 

ABSTRACT

Background