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Division of Operations and Administration

The Division of Emergency Medicine Operations is composed of faculty, nursing, pharmacy, information technology, advanced practice providers, and resident leaders who oversee, innovate, and strive for excellence in the emergency care we provide.  

Division Activities

Recurring Division Meetings

  • Executive leadership
  • Clinical operations
  • Informatics
  • Quality analysis/Peer review
  • Clinical quality/quality improvement
  • Airway performance improvement
  • Trauma performance improvement

Sample Operations Campaigns

  • Linking ED patients with substance use disorder to treatment
  • Improving sepsis care bundle (SEP-1) performance via a nurse-driven checklist
  • Reducing time to antibiotic administration for ED patients with severe sepsis or septic shock
  • Reducing catheter associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs)
  • Using a standardized screening instrument to identify ED patients with increased risk for agitated behavior
  • Improving ED patient satisfaction through increased team communication

Resident Involvement

Quality Improvement and Knowledge Translation clinical practice guidelines: As an established part of the residency curriculum, second year residents work with a faculty mentor to create or update patient care algorithms. Residents gain experience collaborating with other academic departments, review the most up-to-date evidence, and present their product in a grand rounds lecture. These algorithms are reviewed by residents, faculty, pharmacists, and are published for clinical use on tamingthesru.com.

Quality improvement and Patient Safety Education: As a mini curriculum in our grand rounds, resident trainees learn about quality improvement methodology and patient safety science, applying these principles to the care we provide.

Operations Elective: Residents interested in learning more about operations may do one or more 2-week electives, spending additional time with our operations faculty, attending department meetings, and may choose to do an academic project related to operations.

Operations Leadership Academy: Faculty and residents meet quarterly to discuss a rotating 3-year curriculum, built around operations, logistics and leadership. Residents can formally join the academy where they receive 1-on-1 faculty mentoring and completing an academic project related to operations.

Resident Assistant Medical Director (RAMD): Residents considering a career interest in operations may apply to become a RAMD for one of our department sites. These residents gain increased exposure to administration and serve as liaisons between the individual departments and resident trainees.

Operations Fellowship

About the Fellowship

The Clinical Operations and Administration Fellowship at the University of Cincinnati offers a two-year, mentored experience in Emergency Department health system operations, healthcare administration, quality improvement, and patient safety. The objectives of the fellowship are to provide an experience that fosters skills in project and team management, leadership, departmental operations and directorship/management, business administration, and operational research.  

The Clinical Operations and Administration Fellowship aims to combine both theoretical and experiential training in operations and administration, including expertise in emergency department, hospital, and health system operations, quality improvement science and processes, and patient safety. Additionally, the fellowship will enable graduates to continue to refine clinical leadership skills and integrate those skills in the administration and academic realm. As such, graduates should acquire foundational skills that will foster scholarship and a future successful academic career.  

The fellow will complete a Master of Business Administration at the University of Cincinnati’s Lindner College of Business. The fellow will also complete the ACEP Emergency Department Director’s Academy Phase I course.  

Goals and Objectives

Administration: Develop skills necessary to manage departmental and hospital operations, including effective leadership, quality improvement, patient safety, personal management, staffing, budgeting and accounting, billing and coding, and relevant information technology processes.

Education: Develop skills that will allow for success as a current and future educator in the realm of emergency medicine operations administration. Including but not limited to curriculum development, maintenance, and leadership of the Operations Leadership Academy (OLA), within the department emergency medicine, as well as the Operations Elective experiences.

Research: Develop fundamental skills in quality, patient safety, emergency department and/or hospital operations or clinical research to allow the fellow to evolve as a leading academic emergency physician. The program should include focused health services research training, training and design and conduct of clinical trials, and training in writing and reviewing scientific manuscripts. By graduation, the fellow should produce a scholarly project

Curriculum

The Clinical Operations and Administration Fellowship is designed to provide individualized training in health care operations and administration to develop leaders in Emergency Medicine. The fellowship will provide training in medical directorship while also augmenting the fellow’s leadership competencies. The fellow will practice as a junior attending at our flagship academic site, University of Cincinnati Medical Center, and at our community sites (The Jewish Hospital and West Chester Hospital). The fellow will complete longitudinal departmental, hospital, and health system level projects to further develop their operational, administrative, and leadership skills. The fellow will work closely with the medical directorship staff and serve on numerous committees throughout the department, hospital and health system.

Application Process

Applicants must be graduating from an Emergency Medicine residency program and will need to have an Ohio medical license before starting the fellowship.

Application Requirements
  • Current CV
  • Personal Statement
  • USMLE or COMLEX scores (official report)
  • 3 Letters of Recommendation (one must be from your current program director)

How to Apply: send all required materials to Amy Hirsch (hirscha@ucmail.uc.edu)

Fellowship Directors

Greg Fermann, MD
Executive Vice Chair
UCMC ED Medical Director
gregory.fermann@uc.edu


K. Robert Thompson III, MD, MBA
UCMC ED Associate Medical Director
robert.thompson@uc.edu

Operations Faculty

K Robert Thompson III, MD, MBA 
UCMC ED Medical Director

Hannah Hughes, MD, MBA
UCMC ED Assistant Medical Director

Sanjay Shewakramani, MD 
West Chester ED Medical Director

Jimmy Summers, MD 
West Chester ED Associate Medical Director

Michael Willing, MD, MBA
The Jewish Hospital ED Medical Director

Andrew Adan, MD 
The Jewish Hospital ED Associate Medical Director

David Thompson, MD, MPH
UCMC ED Director of Quality Improvement and Patient Safety

Prior Operations Fellows
  • Timothy Loftus, MD
  • K. Rob Thompson, MD
  • Michael Holbrook, MD
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Contact Us

Department of
Internal Medicine

Medical Sciences Building Room 6065
231 Albert Sabin Way
PO Box 670557
Cincinnati, OH 45267-0557

Phone: 513-558-4231
Fax: 513-558-0852
Email: imoffice@uc.edu