Kentucky 45th in the
Nation for Healthcare

Source The Commonwealth Fund

Nancy J. Wilson, M.D., M.P.H. - Resume

Dr. Nancy J. Wilson is Senior Advisor to the Director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the Office of the Secretary for Health and Human Services. In her role on the Secretary’s Value-driven Healthcare Initiative she is leading the work to establish local multi-stakeholder improvement collaboratives nation-wide. To accelerate the identification and adoption of promising improvement strategies and standardized metrics she is creating a nation-wide learning network for such collaboratives. Related activities include coordinating and supporting the work of public private alliances working to develop consensus to implement a set of nationally-endorsed, consensus-derived performance measures.

Prior to joining the Department of Health and Human Services, Dr. Wilson was Vice President and Medical Director for VHA, Inc., a nationwide network of 2,200 leading community-owned health care organizations and their affiliated physicians. Dr. Wilson designed and developed all national clinical quality improvement products and services. She led nation-wide quality improvement collaboratives that translated evidence-based practices into improved patient outcomes. Her accomplishments included Critical Care improvements that resulted in decreased ventilator associated pneumonia rates (10 to 0 per 1,000 ventilator days); patient and family satisfaction scores over 90%; and a 37% drop in direct cost per ICU admission. She also designed and engaged over 600 hospitals in nationwide patient safety initiatives targeted toward hospital leadership, boards of directors, physicians, and frontline employees. She defined and incorporated dimensions of safety in Novation contract specifications and was instrumental in establishing a Novation Issue Resolution System to identify, communicate, and act on clinician-observed drug and device safety problems. For all her work in patient safety Dr. Wilson was awarded VHA’s first annual President’s Council Leadership Award.

Before joining VHA, Dr. Wilson was Director of the Office of Performance and Quality for the Veterans Health Administration. As director, Dr. Wilson was responsible for assuring quality of patient care in the nation’s largest integrated health care system. Among her accomplishments Dr. Wilson designed and implemented a new comprehensive performance management system that 1) aligned VA’s vision, mission, and goals with quantifiable strategic objectives; 2) defined measures to track progress in meeting those goals and objectives; and 3) held management accountable for results achieved. During her tenure, bed-days of care per 1000 patients decreased 62%--from 3,530 to 1,333; ambulatory surgeries increased from 35% to 82% with increased surgical productivity and reduced mortality; and patient-reported problems in timeliness of access, courtesy, and coordination of care were cut in half to match external benchmark performance. Dr. Wilson also created and implemented indexes for Preventive Care, Chronic Disease Care, and Palliative Care that resulted in dramatic improvements in care of patients with hypertension, COPD, diabetes, obesity, acute myocardial infarction. Screening and counseling for substance use, cancer prevention, and vaccinations substantially increased, and over 90% of eligible patients began receiving palliative care services.

Dr. Wilson is a 1976 BSN honors graduate of the University of Pittsburgh. She received her MD from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1986 where she also completed her medical internship and residency in 1989. In 1994 she completed a General Medicine/Health Services Research Fellowship at Harvard Medical School while obtaining her MPH in Health Care Management at the Harvard School of Public Health. During her fellowship she designed a patient satisfaction survey system for the VA that culminated in the creation of VA’s National Customer Feedback Center. This work resulted in receipt of the Vice-Presidential Hammer Award for Reinventing Government.

Dr. Wilson is currently an advisor to the Partnership for Patient Safety, as well as a judge for several national quality awards including the AHA Quest for Quality Award and the National Quality Forum Healthcare Award. She is also a member of several professional societies including the Society of General Internal Medicine, the American College of Physicians, American College of Physician Executives, and the American Public Health Association.