New Faculty Spotlight: Ann M Stey, MD
Dr. Anne M Stey is a new member of IPHAM's Center for Health Services & Outcomes Research. Dr. Stey is an assistant professor in the Department of Surgery and was kind enough to answer a few questions so we can get to know her better.
What is your research focus and how did you become interested in the topic?
My research focus is on improving value of emergency surgical, trauma and critical care. I became interested in this topic after first witnessing the inequity and inefficiency in our health care system. Health is a basic requirement for people to work to improve their socioeconomic condition and contribute to our economy. An efficient health care system would provide timely, affordable, high quality care to those who need it the most because the consequence of not doing so has externalities that effect the entire population. The intensive care unit is the most costly area of care in the hospital. Injury is the number one killer of people under the age of 44. Critical illness and injury are particularly salient place to work on improving cost and quality of care within the broader health care system. My early work as a graduate and masters student focused on cost-effectiveness analysis to assist in making clinical decisions. In my health services research fellowship I shifted my focus to measurement of cost and quality of care. I am now trying to understand how to improve the cost and quality of care of the critically ill and injured patients. My work spans the from the micro-system in the intensive care unit in hospital to the larger trauma systems and how we can optimize processes of care to improve efficiency in how information is relayed and decisions are made as patients move through these systems. Health care is still a uniquely human field that requires extensive coordination, collaboration and communication across a wide range of individuals from vastly diverse backgrounds. Complex system like that are a real opportunity to better integrate data systems to improve access to all available data to make more timely, informed decisions for patients and also improve how the individuals within the system experience their work. I am really interested in how coordination, collaboration and communication can be improved upon to optimize how we care for critically ill and injured patients.
What is the potential impact of your research?
The potential impact of my research is to improve the productive efficiency in our health care system both by reducing waste, improving access to data real-time to all relevant stakeholders and making timely decisions around high value interventions across the entire range of health care providers, payers, patients and families. My ultimate goal would be to help reduce cost and improve quality of care we provide to the critically ill and injured patient.
How can IPHAM researchers contact you to collaborate?
IPHAM researchers can contact me via my email at anne.stey@northwestern.edu or anne.stey@nm.org or as013j@gmail.com. My office phone numbers are 312-695-2963 and 312-503-3782.
(published September 30, 2019)