Medical Director, Intensive Care and Special Care Units

Johns Hopkins Howard County Medical Center

With guidance from Shahriar Amin, the patient care technicians (PCTs) on the special care unit recently worked together to implement new procedures that will improve and further prioritize patient care and safety. The team evaluated existing processes and determined the best ways to streamline their workflow. The PCTs identified strategies to restock patient rooms more frequently, ensuring that shift change nurses have everything they need during hand off. They also redesigned rounds during the bedside shift change to improve and streamline communication with patients and families. “These are just some of the examples of how the PCTs in the special care unit put their patients first and lead by example,” says a colleague.

Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center

The Johns Hopkins Center for Nontuberculous Mycobacteria (NTM) and Bronchiectasis offers the highest quality of integrated, multidisciplinary care for patients with some of the most challenging infections and underlying conditions. Christopher Lippincott and his team of infectious disease specialists, pulmonologists, clinical pharmacologists and physical therapists typically begin evaluating a patient’s case before the patient reaches the clinic, mentoring referring physicians through treatment and laying the groundwork for what becomes a years-long relationship with the patient.

The center is a magnet for referrals from throughout the health system, including referrals regarding infectious diseases and pulmonology, as well as surgical subspecialties such as plastic surgery and orthopedics. It is also emerging as one of the country’s top referral centers for challenging NTM and bronchiectasis cases. To date, the team has treated patients from 30 states and Washington, D.C.

The Center for NTM and Bronchiectasis team embraces these referrals with enthusiasm through weekly multidisciplinary conferences where they collaborate on complex cases before seeing patients in clinic. The center provides innovative care, and its integrated services make the center a medical home for patient who, for years, have had nowhere else to turn.

The Johns Hopkins Hospital

In the six years since its inception, the interdisciplinary team at the Johns Hopkins Sheikh Khalifa Center of Excellence in Stroke Treatment, Recovery and Rehabilitation, led by physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist Preeti Raghavan, has blazed trails with novel clinical approaches that have significantly elevated the global standard of stroke care and helped numerous patients receive timely, evidence-based rehabilitation to reduce long-term disability resulting from stroke.

The team’s physicians, physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech and language pathologists, psychologists, rehabilitation engineers and data scientists have integrated stroke care into the inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation continuum as well as into acute care at Johns Hopkins. They’ve implemented a standard battery of measures across the institution for all patients being treated for stroke. And along with the Precision Rehabilitation Center of Excellence, they’ve developed a system to analyze clinical data from electronic medical records that can help build models for precision stroke care.

In February 2023, an entire supplemental issue of the American Journal of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation was published detailing the lessons the Sheikh Khalifa Center learned in forging a new model of stroke care.

“We’re working on new pathways to help us translate our cutting-edge research into meaningful policy ideas,” says Dr. Raghavan. “Our goals are to become the preeminent source of academic expertise for evidence-based stroke care and to create the leading academic hub for data science and artificial intelligence to drive research and teaching across Johns Hopkins and around the world.”

Otolaryngologist, Johns Hopkins Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery

Suburban Hospital

Chronic cough is a complicated condition, and its treatment can span multiple disciplines. During the past few years, Vaninder Dhillon has pioneered the innovative procedure superior laryngeal nerve block. Dhillon treats hundreds of patients each year with this technique, some of whom travel internationally to see her, and she works with speech language pathology to ensure these patients receive multidisciplinary continuity of care. “Dr. Dhillon has allowed for significant improvement in the quality of life in patients with chronic cough while advancing the field,” a colleague says. “She is recognized among colleagues both within and outside otolaryngology for her expertise, and she has spoken on this treatment in national and international forums. This is an advancement of a clinical innovation beyond the Johns Hopkins Medicine practice.”