About Robert Dittus

Bio

Robert Dittus, MD, MPH is the Albert and Bernard Werthan Professor of Medicine, Associate Vice Chancellor for Public Health and Health Care, Senior Associate Dean for Population Health Sciences, and Director of the Institute for Medicine and Public Health at Vanderbilt University and Director of the Geriatric Research, Education and Clinical Center (GRECC), Senior Quality Scholar and Director of the Quality Scholars Program at the VA Tennessee Valley Healthcare System. He has served previously as Chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine and Public Health at Vanderbilt and Director of Clinical Practice and Health Policy Analysis at the Regenstrief Institute at Indiana University. Dr. Dittus has combined training in industrial engineering, medicine and epidemiology to advance healthcare quality improvement, outcomes of care and overall individual and population health through his research on the effectiveness, efficiency, timeliness, safety and equity of health care. He has advanced the methodology of medical decision-making and conducted numerous studies delineating the comparative effectiveness of alternative strategies for clinical care. He has conducted numerous studies examining the microsystems of health care that have improved health care delivery and on the macrosystems of health care that have led to improvements in health policy. Over the past ten years, he has served as senior investigator to guide the discovery of critical illness associated delirium and long-term cognitive impairment and development of new treatment paradigms with global impact on reducing the mortality, morbidity and costs of critical care. He is currently principal investigator of a large CMS Innovation Project to improve health care delivery and population health through care coordination. He has led or been co-investigator of over $300 million in research and training funding and authored over 200 publications.