Applied Population Health (PDF)

Amy M. Sitapati, MD
Clinical Professor, Department of Medicine, Division of Internal Medicine and Division of Biomedical Informatics
Chief Medical Information Officer of Population Health
Internist, La Jolla Internal Medicine
University of California San Diego

As Chief Medical Information Officer of the Population Health for UC San Diego Health, Dr. Sitapati provides strategic vision and oversight. Using enterprise solutions that improve quality, safety, and outcomes, she leads the design of population level systems that support workflows for organizational goals. Dr. Sitapati is the executive lead at UCSDH for two CMS programs called PRIME and QIP, worth more than $25 million annually in eligible performance incentive payments. In this role, she directs more than 20 projects containing more than 80 quality measures supported by more than 150 active team members. Across the health system, Dr. Sitapati synchronizes the strategic vision, mapping, prioritization and expertise related quality infrastructure supporting Pay for Performance (P4P), Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS), Meaningful Use (MU), Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS), Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA), and California's third largest Medicare Shared Savings Program Accountable Care Organization (MSSP ACO) using more than 80 EHR based registries.

Dr. Sitapati's expertise includes Board Certification in Clinical Informatics and Internal Medicine, a bachelor's in engineering at Case Western Reserve University, doctorate in medicine at Case Western Reserve University, coursework in clinical research at UC San Diego, business at UC Los Angeles Anderson School of Business, EHR training in Epic as a physician builder, and lean black belt training. Dr. Sitapati has been recognized for her work in promoting culturally competent care through recognition of the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity workgroup which she chairs by the Chancellor's 2018 UC San Diego Inclusive Excellence Award Recipients diversity award.

With more than a decade of experience in informatics associated quality improvement, Dr. Sitapati brings substantial experience in using data to drive improved clinical workflows that ultimately provide healthier patient populations. She began this journey nearly eighteen years ago caring for HIV/AIDS patients in inpatient, outpatient, and border care delivery sites. This evolved into a deep appreciation for the care continuum, complexity of multimorbidity, shortage of human health workforce, influence of social determinants and remarkable foundational importance that registries can serve to anchor and improve care. Dr. Sitapati has given much thought and daily iterative work in mastering patient centered care delivery, implementation of meaningful risk acuity scoring, development of dynamic decision support, quality driven care, and access to research. As a former member of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) health information technology study section, and a current member of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) breast panel, Dr. Sitapati has experience in considering academic needs related to population health. Dr. Sitapati is the local investigator for the California Vital Records and give thought to the intersection between public and health system level data. She provides instruction in clinical informatics and Kelee meditation in the school of medicine to physicians, pharmacists, computer and computational scientists. From the perspective of research, she leads the local recruitment team for the NIH precision medicine movement, All of Us, and thinks about how the intersection between research and population health. Dr. Sitapati believes that medicine of the future will integrate research, continuous quality improvement, and population driven healthcare delivery into the daily practice of medicine in remarkable ways to serve as the 'penicillin' of the future by directing the right care to the right patient with the right resources.