Maxime Cannesson, UC Irvine
Maxime Cannesson, M.D., Ph.D., is an associate professor of anesthesiology & perioperative care at UC Irvine. He is the director of clinical research and the director of cardiac anesthesia in the Department of Anesthesiology & Perioperative Care. He is an expert on perioperative hemodynamic optimization and fluid management in patients undergoing high-risk surgery and has developed or helped to develop several non-invasive hemodynamic monitoring indices and monitors for helping with the care of high-risk surgery patients.

Cannesson has recently been awarded the 2013 CHQI fellowship. This funding will support him to develop an Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) program at UC Irvine and then systemwide. Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) is a bundle of "best evidence-based practices" delivered by a multi-professional health care team, with the intention of enhancing patient recovery following high-risk surgery. This program includes management of perioperative pain, nausea and vomiting, transfusion, and goal-directed fluid administration and hemodynamic optimization. Where ERAS is embedded, participating sites report significantly improved patient experience, clinical outcomes, multi-disciplinary team collaboration, and reduction in length of stay and reduced risk of hospital-acquired infections.

Robin Clarke, UCLA
Robin Clarke, M.D., M.S.H.S. is the medical director for quality for the UCLA Faculty Practice Group and an assistant clinical professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine. He is a practicing board-certified general internist. His training includes internal medicine residency training at UCLA, the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program at UCLA and a Master's in Science of Health Services Research from the UCLA School of Public Health. He also has had advanced training in quality improvement and lean methodologies.

As a health services researcher, Clarke has evaluated the application of patient-centered medical home redesign within health care safety net practices. He has published and presented nationally on this topic. He is currently the principal investigator on a pilot project grant funded by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) that is evaluating the inclusion of non-medical services in community health centers treating low-income patients. As the medical director for quality, Clarke coordinates and advances the quality of UCLA's ambulatory network. Through collaborations with the clinical departments and the hospital system, he oversees improvement programs aimed at enhancing the patient experience and increasing the value of the care delivered. For his CHQI fellowship project, Clarke will be supporting the development of quality programs within all of the UCLA Health System clinical departments and divisions.

Nathaniel Gleason, UC San Francisco
Nathaniel Gleason, M.D., attended Brown University and then earned his medical degree at UCSF, where he was awarded the UCSF Gold-Headed Cane from his peers for possessing the qualities of true physicianship. He completed his residency training in general internal medicine and primary care, also at UCSF, where he now practices as a primary care physician and is an assistant clinical professor of medicine.

The CHQI fellowship award will support Gleason's work on innovations to improve access to timely, efficient specialty care at lower cost. E-consults -- information-only exchanges that allow primary care providers to obtain guidance from specialists via electronic consultation in appropriate cases -- were launched in September 2012 at UCSF and offer patients timely access to specialist expertise, without the travel, work absence and insurance co-pay associated with an office visit. Referrals managed via an e-consult system may address demand, and thereby improve access to specialty office visits for those patients who do require in-person evaluation. With mentorship from Dr. Ralph Gonzales, Gleason will expand the current e-consult program to new specialties at UCSF and conduct a multidimensional evaluation of the program.

Anne Lin, UCLA
Anne Lin, M.D., is an assistant professor-in-residence in the Department of Surgery, Section of Colorectal Surgery, at UCLA. She is board certified in colorectal surgery and general surgery. She attended medical school at Tufts University and then completed general surgery residency training at Brown University in Rhode Island. She then completed fellowship training in colorectal surgery at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and at Cleveland Clinic Florida. She was an assistant professor of surgery at Washington University in St. Louis before being recruited to UCLA. She is a fellow of the American Society of Colon and Rectal Surgeons (FASCRS) and of the American College of Surgeons (FACS).

Lin's clinical and research interests include surgical quality and inherited colorectal cancer syndromes.

James Marcin, UC Davis
James Marcin, M.D., M.P.H., is a professor of pediatrics and pediatric critical care at the UC Davis Children's Hospital in Sacramento and the director of the Pediatric Telemedicine Program. He also is the senior medical adviser to the Center for Connected Health Policy.

Marcin has been involved with telemedicine as it relates to clinical outcomes, quality of care and cost effectiveness for more than 12 years. He works closely with other clinicians, administrators, technicians and health policymakers to support the use of telemedicine in the most effective and cost efficient settings. He has been a member of the American Telemedicine Association for more than 10 years and is the founding and immediate past chair of the Pediatric Telehealth Special Interest Group. He conducts research in telemedicine and quality of care, particularly as it relates to acutely ill and injured children in the emergency department and the intensive care unit. He has been principal investigator on grants from AHRQ, HRSA and EMS-C investigating the impact of telemedicine on quality of care and specific patient outcomes.

Toby Maurer, UC San Francisco
Toby Maurer, M.D., is a professor of clinical dermatology at UCSF. Born and raised in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, she went to medical school in Calgary, Alberta, and completed two residencies at UCSF in family medicine and dermatology. She also has completed a fellowship in HIV dermatology. She has been the chief of dermatology at San Francisco General Hospital since 1994. Her clinical and research interests include HIV dermatology and primary care dermatology. She is the principal investigator and collaborator on several studies both domestically and internationally in HIV dermatology. Current research includes studies that capture the global burden of HIV dermatologic disease and developing appropriate treatment guidelines. Another focus of the work is in the early detection of HIV-related Kaposi's sarcoma.

It is this international dermatologic work that was the nidus for exploring the role of teledermatology in providing specialty needs to a wide group of patients. The realization that access could be cracked wide open was a concept that was quickly developed and implemented in the Bay Area county systems in which Maurer works. Maurer and her colleagues have become facile at using store-and-forward teledermatology triage consults to facilitate specialty referrals from primary care colleagues. This interest along with an interest in teaching dermatology to primary care doctors and using innovation to bring the dermatologic specialty into the changing health care arena has led her to ask the question of how teledermatology can be used effectively in the insured system of the UC hospitals and clinics.

Joo Song, UC Davis
Joo Song, M.D., is a native of Southern California who completed his undergraduate training at UCLA. He moved out to the East Coast to complete his medical school and residency training in pathology at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Afterwards, he completed his fellowship training in hematopathology at the National Cancer Institute under the direction of Dr. Elaine Jaffe.

Currently, as an assistant professor in the Department of Pathology at UC Davis, Song is actively involved in teaching, research and serves as a liaison between UC campuses as the associate director of the outreach program. As a recipient of the NIH Loan Repayment program, Song was supported in his investigational pursuits in the classification and biology of lymphomas.

Vaishal Tolia, UC San Diego
Vaishal Tolia, M.D., M.P.H., is an assistant clinical professor of emergency medicine at UC San Diego. He was born in Queens, N.Y., and grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. He attended the University of Illinois at Chicago and earned undergraduate degrees in both biology and economics. He continued graduate studies at the University of Illinois, where he completed a combined M.D. and M.P.H. program with an emphasis on health policy and administration in 2004. As a fourth-year medical student, he earned the student research award, University Alumni Association leadership award, as well as being a James Scholar. He continued his residency training at the University of Illinois Chicago in the combined emergency medicine/internal medicine program, where he graduated with the Academic Scholar Award in 2009.

Tolia's research interests include patient safety, observation medicine, chest pain protocols and curriculum development.

Elisa Tong, UC Davis
Elisa Tong, M.D., M.A., is an associate professor of internal medicine at UC Davis. She completed her undergraduate, medical and master's in health services research degrees at Stanford University, as well as a postdoctoral research fellowship in general internal medicine at UCSF. She has been on faculty at UC Davis since 2006.

Tong's research interest is in tobacco control policy and cessation. Her UC CHQI project, "Improving UC Health by Using Technology to Promote Tobacco Cessation," will implement and refine electronic medical record (EMR) modification prototypes to promote tobacco cessation. Findings from this UC Davis project will be disseminated to the other UC medical campuses for developing a UC Health tobacco cessation network.

Shermeen Vakharia, UC Irvine
Shermeen Vakharia, M.D., completed her residency in anesthesiology from SUNY Health Science Center in Syracuse, N.Y., following which she did fellowships in cardiac anesthesia and pain management. In October 2003, she joined UC Irvine Health, and was soon appointed the director of cardiac anesthesia. During this period, she became exceedingly interested in quality and patient safety. In 2008, she became the departmental quality and compliance officer, as well as the anesthesia clinical lead for the anesthesia information management systems at UC Irvine Health. She developed innovative ways of improving quality and patient safety through information systems, as well as provider level dashboards and novel approaches to traditional morbidity and mortality meetings.

In 2011, Vakharia was appointed the vice chair of quality and patient safety for the Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Care at UC Irvine. She played a major role in the implementation of the Joint Surgical Home at UC Irvine Health. She also serves on the Organizational Performance Committee and co-chairs the Perioperative Quality and Safety Committee. She is involved in several quality initiatives at the departmental, organizational and national level.