Dietitians Leading Innovation: Using Data for Quality Improvement and Patient-Focused Transitions of Care

Dr. Sadeq Quraishi is a physician-scientist at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Assistant Professor of Anesthesia at Harvard Medical School, both in Boston, MA. Dr. Quraishi first trained as a physical therapist at McGill University and then completed medical school and residency training in Anesthesiology at Penn State University. He went on to complete a clinical fellowship in Critical Care Medicine at Johns Hopkins University and an NIH-funded translational research fellowship at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Quraishi's research interest is in the area of macro and micronutrient delivery in hospitalized patients, with a special focus on perioperative and critically ill patients. His group has been involved in innovative and ground-breaking work related to vitamin D regulation in acute stress. Other areas of interest include strategies for: 1) assessing malnutrition in hospitalized patients; 2) maintaining lean body mass in critically ill patients; and 3) use of point-of-care devices to assess changes in lean body mass during acute illness.

In Ms. Phillip’s role as Division Director of Clinical Support at Morrison Healthcare, she provides regulatory oversight for clinical nutrition services at ~160 hospitals from California to Michigan and directs the development, implementation, and maintenance of clinical nutrition programs and services. Ms. Phillips has worked with Morrison’s corporate operations and wellness/nutrition teams to lead a productivity analysis program and outcomes measurement studies for registered dietitians to ensure efficient and effective use of resources, and leads program development for ambulatory nutrition programs. She is the Public Policy Chair of the Utah Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the Chair of the Academy’s Consumer Protection and Licensure Committee, the Chair-Elect for the Clinical Nutrition Management DPG, and the Director of Communication and Marketing for the Dietitians in Nutrition Support DPG. She has championed legislative updates to Virginia and Utah regulations to allow greater flexibility for order writing privileges for dietitians in hospitals and long-term care facilities. She has authored several articles related to malnutrition identification and treatment.

Ms. Danis is the Director of Clinical Nutrition for the UPMC Presbyterian Shadyside Campuses and System Computrition Team. Ms. Danis also serves as the Chair of the Clinical Nutrition System Integration Committee leading and supporting system programs and initiatives for the UPMC Health System. Recent program initiatives include, EHR system diet order rebuild, dietitian order writing protocol, rebuilding the nutrition assessment documentation and development of a comprehensive malnutrition recognition program. She led the UPMC MQii initiatives in 2017 and is continuing with the initiative planning the program for 2018. Ms. Danis is active at the national level as a board member for the Clinical Nutrition Managers Practice Group serving over the past years as Treasurer, Professional Development Chair and currently as the Fundraising Chair. She is also a member of The Academy’s Quality Leader Alliance and member of the Informatics HL7 C-CDA Structured Documentation Implementation Guide workgroup.

Ainsley Malone is a Dietitian member of the Nutrition Support Team at Mt. Carmel West Hospital in Columbus, Ohio where she is involved in the management of critically ill patients requiring enteral and parenteral nutrition. In addition, Ms. Malone serves as a Clinical Practice Consultant to the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (A.S.P.E.N.). She is a Certified Nutrition Support Clinician (CNSC) and has given international, national and local presentations on many nutrition topics including malnutrition. In addition to her clinical practice activities, Ms. Malone has served ASPEN in many capacities including Chair of the Malnutrition Committee and as President in 2013. She also was ASPEN’s representative to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Malnutrition Workgroup.