Professional Bio
Robert Dittus, MD, MPH, is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine and Public Health, Department of Medicine, at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He has devoted over 40 years to healthcare quality improvement and his research and leadership contributions have led to the improvement of the effectiveness, efficiency, timeliness, safety and equity of health care.
He has secured over $350 million in grant funding and has over 250 publications. He has advanced the methodology of medical decision-making and delineated the comparative effectiveness of alternative strategies for clinical care. He has served as the chief of general internal medicine at Vanderbilt, the founding director of the Vanderbilt Center for Health Services Research the founding director of the Vanderbilt Institute for Medicine and Public Health, the founding director of the Tennessee Valley Geriatric Research, Education and Clinical Center and the founding director of the Vanderbilt-VA Quality Scholars Program.
Over the past 20 years, Dr. Dittus has guided 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. In ambulatory care, he led a large CMS Innovation Project to improve health care delivery through care coordination.
Dr. Dittus has led 14 federally funded fellowship training grants in clinical research and was the principal investigator of Vanderbilt's NIH funded K30 award. He has trained over 150 fellows and junior faculty of whom over 80% remain in academic medicine. He has served as the President of the Association for Clinical Research Training, a member of the board and received the 2013 Distinguished Educator Award from the Association for Clinical and Translational Science.
Dr. Dittus has served on numerous academic, professional and local health care Boards of Directors and Councils, including the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health, the United Way of Metropolitan Nashville, where he is also an officer and chair of community impact, and several universities: Northwestern, Indiana, Purdue and Michigan.
His various awards include being named Purdue University's Outstanding Graduating Senior Man, Teaching and Research Scholar of the American College of Physicians and the Harvey Branscomb Distinguished Professor at Vanderbilt University. He was given the Outstanding Industrial Engineer Award from the Purdue School of Industrial Engineering, the Distinguished Engineering Alumnus Award from the Purdue College of Engineering, the Distinguished Alumni Award from Indiana University, the Tyroler Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of North Carolina, the Duncan Neuhauser Award for Curricular Innovation from the Academy for Healthcare Improvement, the Innovation with Distinction Award in Research Training and Education from the AAMC and the Vanderbilt University Medical Center Excellence in Mentoring Translational Scientists Award.
Dr. Dittus served as the founding President of the Academy for Healthcare Improvement, an international professional society for those engaged in scholarship and the practice of improving health care quality and safety. He is an elected member of the Association of American Physicians.
Relevant Links
Publications
Education
MD - Indiana University Bloomington, 1978
Residency - Medicine - Indiana University Bloomington, 1982
Fellowship - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1984
MPH - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1984
Contact
Email
Kimryn.Rathmell@Vumc.Org
Address
777 Preston Research Building
2220 Pierce Ave
Nashville, TN 37232-6307