This award is given to an individual or team in recognition of outstanding quality of care provided to patients. Recipients will have demonstrated excellence in reportable measures of quality, benchmarked patient outcomes, or improvements in internally measured outcomes.
2023 / 2022 / 2021 / 2020 / 2019 / 2018 / 2017 / 2016 / 2015 / 2014 / 2013 / 2012 / 2011
2023 Winner
Stephanie Radke, MD, Obstetrics and Gynecology
Stephanie Radke, MD, has been a champion for patient quality and safety for many years within the OBGYN department. After recently stepping into a leadership role, Radke’s effect has become even greater. Through her numerous educational and clinical work-flow initiatives, the OBGYN team has reduced the number of NTSV Cesarean deliveries—a well-known metric for tracking and reducing unnecessary Cesarean births—as well as postpartum hemorrhages, which is the single largest driver of increased maternal morbidity. She has developed and implemented the Iowa Maternal Quality Care Collaborative (IMQCC), funded by the Maternal Health Innovation grant from Health Resources and Services Administration. Radke is a leader state-wide and at UI Health Care.
2022 Winner
Prenatal Free Medical Clinic
The Prenatal Free Medical Clinic was created in December 2017 through the collaboration of the University of Iowa Department of Family Medicine with the Iowa City Free Medical Clinic (FMC). There is a core care coordination group to manage patient recruitment, scheduling, and care tracking. They have organized grant applications and fundraising for nonstress test machines and medical supplies (including breast pumps, automatic blood pressure cuffs, fetal dopplers, intrauterine devices, and immunizations). Since starting the FMC program in December 2017, they have followed over 200 pregnancies, provided over 1000 prenatal visits, performed over 200 postpartum visits, and placed 28 IUDs at the Iowa City Free Medical Clinic. Patients in the FMC group were able to receive a similar number of prenatal visits to patents who have full Medicaid coverage.
2021 Winner
Kenneth Nepple, MD and Caryn Berkowitz, MD, Urology and Internal Medicine
The work of Dr. Nepple and Dr. Berkowitz has improved the identification and management of malnutrition at UIHC and nationally. Their work has demonstrated a substantial benefit for patients, providers, and institution. For hospital inpatients, identification of medical comorbidities is an important measure of severity of illness and impacts both hospital reimbursement and risk adjustment for quality measures. Dr. Nepple and team initially used Vizient data to confirm that malnutrition (MN) was being under-diagnosed at academic medical centers. As a result, the UIHC MN identification workflow was re-designed to leverage informatics for better documentation. Dr. Berkowitz subsequently developed a multidisciplinary Advanced Nutrition inpatient consult service to help manage patients with malnutrition to directly improve patient outcomes.
2020 Winner
Bradley Manning, MD and Gregory A. Schmidt, MD, Internal Medicine
“The teams caring for COVID patients have provided extraordinarily high-quality care with excellent outcomes,” wrote on nominator. “All members of the teams went above and beyond everyday in a very stressful environment.”
2019 Winner
Noelle Bowdler, MD, Obstetrics and Gynecology
Noelle Bowdler has made a major impact on the reduction in surgery-related infections through her tireless efforts as director of clinical quality, safety, and performance improvement for OB-GYN. She eagerly accepted the daunting task of evaluating all of our surgical practices in order to reduce infectious morbidity throughout UI Hospitals & Clinics. Through her efforts, in close collaboration with faculty and staff colleagues, post-surgical site infections have been greatly reduced. Bowdler also has established a gynecology quality team and an obstetrics quality team, each of which meets monthly to address quality and safety issues in these areas. Throughout her career, she has made it a priority to undertake projects that have broad implications for the delivery of safe, high-quality care to patients.
2018 Winner
Irena Gribovskaja-Rupp, MD, Surgery
Irena Gribovskaja-Rupp has been a champion and leader of the Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) program for colorectal surgery at University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics. Her enthusiasm and leadership with the ERAS program over the last few years has led to a demonstrable change in the way colorectal patients are cared for at the hospital, and has contributed to the improvements in outcomes that we are seeing. She has been great about pursuing a collaborative approach, reaching out to anesthesiology and nursing colleagues in coming up with protocols that are workable and acceptable to a multidisciplinary team.
2017 Winner
John Callaghan, MD, Charles Clark, MD, Nicolas Noiseux, MD, Orthopedic Surgery
The team of John Callaghan, Charles Clark, and Nicolas Noiseux has consistently and effectively used data to drive performance improvement in joint replacement. Due to their continued focus on quality metrics, they have reduced the length of stay; changed to spinal anesthesia when possible to allow for earlier rehabilitation; streamlined and standardized wound closure, dressings, and postoperative medications; reduced the number of blood transfusions; reduced surgical site infections (no infections in knee replacement patients for 11 consecutive quarters); improved antibiotic stewardship by using allergy testing to rule out reported allergies; and improved patient satisfaction metrics.
2016 Winner
Jodi Tate, MD, Psychiatry
2015 Winner
Department of Internal Medicine Quality and Safety Group
Karl Thomas, MD; Aparna Kamath, MD; Melinda Johnson, MD; Mony Fraer, MD; Krista Johnson, MD; Michele Fang, MD; Ethan Kuperman, MD
2014 Winner
Bradley Erickson, MD, MS
Assistant Professor of Urology
2013 Winner
Pathology Clinical Laboratory Team
The Pathology Clinical Laboratory Team, including leaders Matt Krasowski, MD, PhD, and John Kemp, MD, provide a high standard of quality and promote a culture of continuous improvement. Personnel in every area are dedicated and enthusiastic contributors ‟in the backgroundˮ to facilitating excellent patient care. Some recent examples of the team’s outstanding contributions include consistently excellent performance with regard to turnaround time and national benchmarks; introduction of new, and more rapid tests; and process improvements that decreased costs in several areas.
2012 Winner
In Vitro Fertilization Team (accepted by Brad Van Voorhis, MD, professor of obstetrics and gynecology)
Based on outcomes reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and compared with those of other centers in the United States, the IVF Program in the UI Center for Advanced Reproductive Care has been one of the elite programs of its kind in the nation for more than a decade.
2011 Winner
Julia Klesney-Tait, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine
Dr. Julia Klesney-Tait has been instrumental in the development of the lung transplant program at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. Currently, the program is CMS-certified and has one of the shortest lengths-of-stay following lung transplantation in the country. The one-year and three-year survival rates are among the nation's top five programs. Dr. Klesney-Tait has demonstrated excellence in clinical and administrative areas, including programmatic development with outstanding outcomes.
UI Department of Pediatrics
Division of Neonatology (accepted by Jeffrey Segar, MD)
The quality of care provided in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at UI Hospitals and Clinics is unsurpassed. For the second time, the NICU was selected to be part of the Neonatal Research Network of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, which is comprised of 18 leading NICUs throughout the country. For the past four years, the units mortality rate is half that of the NICU next in the ratings, and, when benchmarked against the Vermont Oxford Database for like units, the UI NICU morbidity rates are also consistently low. The Division of Neonatology has been a leader not only within the UI Children's Hospital, but within UI Hospitals and Clinics.
