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| Sonali Desai, MD, MPH | Alexandra Levie, MPH | Stephanie Thierren |
Sonali Desai, MD, MPH, of the Division of Rheumatology, Immunology and Allergy, Alexandra Levie, MPH, of the Department of Quality and Safety, and Stephanie Therrien, of the Center for Clinical Investigation, were awarded a DxQI Seed Grant from the Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine (SIDM) for their project, “Ambulatory Safety Nets to Reduce Missed and Delayed Diagnoses of Cancer.”
SIDM’s DxQI Seed Grant Program awards up to $50,000 to 17 organizations testing interventions to improve the quality, timeliness and accuracy of diagnoses. Grantees will identify and implement small, practical tests of change, then begin to build evidence supporting interventions that could reduce harm due to diagnostic error if replicated and spread across other hospitals and health systems.
With this funding, Desai, Levie and Therrien will lead the expansion of the Department of Quality and Safety’s Ambulatory Safety Nets Program, which seeks to prevent cancer diagnoses from “falling through the cracks” through proactive intervention. The initiative, founded by Desai, supports front-line clinicians by mobilizing central support teams called ambulatory patient safety teams, who help identify abnormal test results and monitor patients who need follow-up care.
More precisely, the SIDM grant will allow the team to centralize current patient data and better track patient outcomes — ultimately enhancing how the team monitors the success of its safety net programs and improves services delivered to patients.
Desai is a practicing rheumatologist in the Division of Rheumatology, Immunology and Allergy, medical director of Ambulatory Patient Safety and director of Quality for the Department of Medicine. Her work uses health information technology to improve quality of care, particularly for rheumatology patients. Levie is a project manager for Ambulatory Safety Nets, where she works to design and develop new safety nets and maintain existing ones. Therrien is a research operations manager for the Center for Clinical Investigation at the Brigham.
Founded in 2011, SIDM is a nonprofit that seeks to catalyze and lead change to improve diagnosis and eliminate harm from diagnostic error.
