UK HealthCare

Williams Named to Editorial Advisory Board of Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety

 

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Jan. 14, 2016) – Dr. Mark V. Williams, professor and vice chair in the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Kentucky, has been named to the advisory board of The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety. The Joint Commission Journal is a monthly peer-reviewed journal that provides both empirical studies and practical instructions on how to understand and implement interventions to improve patient safety and quality.

At UK, Williams also serves as chief transformation and learning officer for the UK HealthCare and director of the Center for Health Services Research.

Williams graduated from Emory University School of Medicine and completed a residency in Internal Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. He also completed a Faculty Development Fellowship in General Medicine at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, the Woodruff Leadership Academy at Emory, the Program in Palliative Care Education and Practice at Harvard and the Advance Training Program in Health Care Delivery Improvement sponsored by Intermountain Healthcare's Institute for Health Care Delivery Research.

Williams established the first hospitalist program for a public hospital in 1998 at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta and built two of the largest academic hospitalist programs in the U.S. at Emory (1998-2007) and Northwestern (2007-2013) Universities. As chief of the Division of Hospital Medicine at UK HealthCare he has doubled the faculty of the unit since 2014 to 60 clinicians. A past president of the Society of Hospital Medicine (SMH) and the founding editor of the Journal of Hospital Medicine, he actively promotes the role of hospitalists as leaders in delivery of health care to hospitalized patients.

He has been quoted in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Consumer Reports. Notably, he also serves as principal investigator for SHM’s Project BOOST (Better Outcomes by Optimizing Safe Transitions). Grant funding from The John A. Hartford Foundation, BlueCross BlueShield of Illinois and other foundations, supported dissemination of Project BOOST to nearly 200 hospitals across the U.S. In 2015, he became principal investigator on Project ACHIEVE (Achieving Patient-Centered Care and Optimized Health In Care Transitions by Evaluating the Value of Evidence), funded with a $15 million contract from PCORI.

With a history of more than $29 million in grants and contracts as principal or co-principal investigator and more than 130 peer-reviewed publications including in journals such as JAMA, New England Journal of Medicine and Annals of Internal Medicine, Williams’ research focuses on quality improvement, care transitions, teamwork and the role of health literacy in the delivery of health care.  

Media Contact: Ann Blackford at 859-323-6442 or ann.blackford@uky.edu