PHILADELPHIA — Craig A. Umscheid, MD, MSCE, an associate professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, has been appointed by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute to serve on its Advisory Panel on Improving Healthcare Systems. Umscheid is also director of the Penn Medicine Center for Evidence-based Practice, which summarizes and disseminates scientific evidence for improving care delivery.
The Institute is an independent, Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization authorized by Congress to fund research that provides patients, caregivers, and clinicians with evidence-based information for making better-informed health care decisions.
During his three-year term, Umscheid and colleagues on the panel will help the Institute identify research funding priorities that reflect outcomes that matter most to patients and other health care decision makers.
Umscheid was selected “on the basis of his experience, expertise, and ability to contribute to the panel’s tasks and responsibilities.” Panel members represent a wide range of health care perspectives including patients, family members, clinicians, and researchers, as well as representatives of health systems and educational institutions.
The Advisory Panel on Improving Healthcare Systems is one of seven that advises the Institute. About 40 candidates from over 400 nominees were selected to serve on these seven panels. Eight out of 145 nominees were selected to serve on the Improving Healthcare Systems panel.
“I am honored to have been chosen to serve on this important advisory panel,” Umscheid said. “Whether as inpatients or outpatients, people receive vital, often life-extending and life-saving care in our nation’s hospitals and health care systems. Ensuring that these systems make use of the best, most up-to-date scientific evidence is crucial for maintaining patients’ health and saving lives.”
Umscheid is also medical director of clinical decision support, where he helps develop and deploy informatics interventions and care pathways to facilitate high-value care. He also is vice chair for quality and safety in the department of Medicine at Penn, and a practicing physician in hospital medicine.
Externally, Umscheid’s roles include assisting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with guideline development, and leading the Penn portion of the ECRI Institute - Penn Medicine Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality funded Evidence-based Practice Center, one of 13 such centers funded to perform comparative effectiveness reviews to inform national healthcare policy. Umscheid received his undergraduate degree from Cornell, his medical degree from Georgetown, and a master’s of science in clinical epidemiology from Penn's Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics.
More information about the Advisory Panel on Improving Healthcare Systems is available on the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute website.
Penn Medicine is one of the world’s leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, excellence in patient care, and community service. The organization consists of the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Penn’s Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine, founded in 1765 as the nation’s first medical school.
The Perelman School of Medicine is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $550 million awarded in the 2022 fiscal year. Home to a proud history of “firsts” in medicine, Penn Medicine teams have pioneered discoveries and innovations that have shaped modern medicine, including recent breakthroughs such as CAR T cell therapy for cancer and the mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccines.
The University of Pennsylvania Health System’s patient care facilities stretch from the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania to the New Jersey shore. These include the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, Chester County Hospital, Lancaster General Health, Penn Medicine Princeton Health, and Pennsylvania Hospital—the nation’s first hospital, founded in 1751. Additional facilities and enterprises include Good Shepherd Penn Partners, Penn Medicine at Home, Lancaster Behavioral Health Hospital, and Princeton House Behavioral Health, among others.
Penn Medicine is an $11.1 billion enterprise powered by more than 49,000 talented faculty and staff.