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Welcome to the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Cincinnati! It is an honor to serve as Chair of this Department, beginning July 1, 2021. I am grateful for Dr. Rouan’s past service as Department Chair and continued guidance to me in my new role.
Our overall, encompassing vision is to provide exceptional, empathetic patient care, while concurrently conducting clinically impactful research and offering innovative medical, graduate, and post-graduate medical and scientific education. We recognize each team member’s contribution to the clinical, research and education missions and we seek to develop each person to their fullest potential.
Our Core Values complement those of UC, the College of Medicine and UC Health and include:
Clinical Vision: We seek to provide high quality, personal, empathetic interactions with every patient and family member—we are focused on the whole individual, not just the disease.
Through our integrated partnership with the UC Health we collaboratively seek to meet and exceed national benchmarks for quality of care, patient satisfaction and associate engagement at all levels and roles.
Through our close partnership with Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, we prioritize transitioning care for pediatric patients with chronic diseases, such as sickle cell anemia, inflammatory bowel disease and cystic fibrosis, to improve outcomes over the life span of patients.
We honor the service and sacrifice of the Armed Forces veterans through an integrated partnership with the Cincinnati Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
Wherever possible we seek to bring care as close as possible to where the patient lives including community outreach practices, long-term care facilities, and even their home.
We will strive to communicate frequently with our colleagues to ensure integrated and coordinated care to improve the lives of our patients and their families.
Research Vision: Our research work derived from the 200+ year College of Medicine history of innovation extends to include basic research, translational research, clinical investigation, health science and outcomes research and educational research, all with the goal of making positive changes in the lives of patients or those we train.
The Department of Internal Medicine, together with UC Health, view research as a differentiating feature of our clinical care models. We emphasize “team research” by working with others within the University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati Children’s Research Foundation, Cincinnati Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and outside collaborators including industry partners to make the greatest impact.
We improve the care of rare and complex diseases by prioritizing the availability of clinical trials for our patients. We believe clinical trials exist for the patient, not that patients exist for clinical trials.
The development of new medical interventions and therapies has meant that diseases which once limited the quality or length of life have now become treatable conditions thereby allowing patients to live normal lives.
We will develop and support an infrastructure to enhance our research mission and train the next generation of investigators.
Educational Vision: We believe that the process of teaching internal medicine is ever so constantly evolving, and our goal is continual improvement in every aspect of this mission.
Our residents and fellows are given the knowledge and experience essential to practicing internal medicine or any subspecialty within this discipline.
Our education model integrates clinical care, quality evaluation and research to produce outstanding professionals for the future of our Internal Medicine specialty.
Our model prioritizes undergraduate and post-graduate trainees to help build the next generation of scientists.
Trainees who put their faith in our team receive our full focus and will be enabled by our efforts to grow them into leaders who will populate academic, industry and health organizations around the world. Doing this represents the primary reason why we enjoy our positions at UC so much!
Thank you for your interest in our UC family and team. I hope that you will explore our website and contact us if you have any questions.
John C. Byrd, MD, FACPThe Gordon and Helen Hughes Taylor Professor and ChairDepartment of Internal Medicine
Physicians within the department are part of the UC Health University of Cincinnati Physicians multispecialty practice, providing comprehensive clinical services in general internal medicine and hospitalist specialties and all medical subspecialties.
We function as a referral practice for primary care, as well as tertiary and quaternary care in highly subspecialized areas such as solid organ and bone marrow transplantation, cancer, diabetes, metabolic diseases, advanced cardiac care, pulmonary hypertension, interstitial lung disease, cystic fibrosis, chronic liver disease, sickle cell disease, hemophilia and HIV care.
We cover approximately 40 percent of all the patients at University of Cincinnati Medical Center, The major teaching hospital of UC Health. Our full-time faculty also staff the internal medicine services at the geographically adjacent Cincinnati Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center with our residents and fellows.
We also provide care at UC Health's West Chester Hospital and Drake Center, the latter being the largest facility for rehabilitation and post-acute care facility in the region.
Ambulatory care is provided at the Hoxworth Building's residency and faculty outpatient practice site adjacent to University Hospital, UC Health Physicians Offices in Clifton, West Chester and Montgomery, Cincinnati VA Medical Center and additional faculty practices throughout the Tristate area.
The provision of the highest quality of care to the underserved population of Cincinnati and Hamilton County is a long-standing commitment of the department and its faculty that is done in partnership with University Hospital.
New clinical practice programs include a diabetes center, sleep center and heart and vascular center. We actively participate in innovative treatments and clinical trials of HIV and Hepatitis C infections with National Institutes of Health research support. The department is also heavily involved in renal, pancreatic and liver transplantation and in all areas of internal medicine.
Several clinical diagnostic programs are located in the recently opened and consolidated Cardiovascular Diagnostic Center of University Hospital. Similar diagnostic and therapeutic services exist at our adjacent VA Medical Center, which has state-of-the-art digital cardiac catheterization and electrophysiology facilities. These two units are completely integrated in the department's structure and training programs.
The Pancreatic Disease Center at UC specializes in the diagnosis, evaluation and treatment of a wide range of pancreatic problems including complicated or recurrent acute pancreatitis, chronic pancreatitis, cystic lesions of the pancreas and pancreatic cancer. Staffed by some of the country's foremost pancreatic disease specialists, this center facilitates rapid evaluation of patients utilizing the most advanced and comprehensive diagnostic and treatment services.
A multidisciplinary brain tumor program was recently initiated in partnership with the departments of neurosurgery and radiation oncology and University Hospital. It joins other multi-specialty cancer programs that comprise the Barrett Cancer Center at University Hospital and the cancer program in West Chester.
Our faculty, residents and fellows play a major role in medical education at the University of Cincinnati. We are responsible for about 25 percent of medical student education over the four years of medical school.
Although most teaching is done during the clinical years, many of our faculty are actively involved in educational programs during the preclinical years of medical school.
In addition, in conjunction with the UC Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, our department supports a PhD graduate training program in pathobiology and molecular medicine, facilitating collaborative interactions between bench science and clinical care.
Our residency training programs include graduates from 40 to 50 U.S. medical schools and a highly select group of international schools each year. Clinical training is divided between University Hospital and Cincinnati VA Medical Center (along with Cincinnati Children's for our med-peds residents), providing for an excellent mix of patient populations.
A major portion of our admissions are through University Hospital's emergency department, the only Level I trauma center in the Greater Cincinnati area. This provides an outstanding experience with critically ill patients.
In addition to the 121 residents in the Department of Internal Medicine, we also provide clinical rotations for internal medicine residents from Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton and residents in other University of Cincinnati departments.
Our commitment to education for our fellows is nationally recognized among the approximately 400 internal medicine training programs. We have had three successive approvals with five-year cycles (the longest available) from the Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education (ACGME).
In 2006 we were among only 17 programs nationwide named as one of the founding institutions for the ACGME's Education Innovation Project. This provided us with the opportunity to create and implement a unique and forward thinking curriculum that emphasizes personalized educational experiences for our residents firmly grounded in evidence-based medicine.
Opportunities for research experiences are also a key component of the curriculum. These have allowed our residents and medical students to have excellent success in academic presentations at state and national levels.
Each of our medical subspecialties offer highly competitive fellowship training programs, with 65 individuals currently enrolled in those programs. Our own residents, whom about 85 percent chose to pursue fellowship training, are extremely successful in obtaining these positions, as well as those at other outstanding academic centers throughout the U.S.
The department is heavily committed to research, which is supported by funding from the NIH, the VA, private foundations and industry. Each division of the department has one or more focus areas of research in which they excel. The type of research is broad and includes bench research, translational research, clinical research and outcomes research.
Many of our research programs are multidisciplinary in nature and involve collaborations with faculty from other UC departments and colleges, as well as Cincinnati Children's. The UC research infrastructure includes many research core facilities that provide investigators with access to the latest in cutting edge technology.
Our clinical research efforts benefit greatly from the Center for Clinical and Translational Science and Training (CCTST), funded in 2009 through a Clinical and Translational Science Award by NIH to our Academic Health Center. The CCTST provides critical infrastructure for clinical and translational research, as well as training of individuals for future careers in such research endeavors.
Training for future research careers is also an important part of the department's mission. Opportunities for research electives are available for all residents and research experience is a keystone of the curriculum of each of the fellowship training programs.
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Medical Sciences Building Room 6065231 Albert Sabin WayPO Box 670557Cincinnati, OH 45267-0557
Phone: 513-558-4231Fax: 513-558-0852Email: imoffice@uc.edu