Program overview

Curriculum

The core curriculum for Geisinger's Clinical Informatics Fellowship is based on ACGME requirements. You’ll participate in didactics, rotations, projects, research and teaching, and you’ll be encouraged to attend and present at national meetings.

We’ll make sure you have a rich experience that focuses on your areas of interest within clinical informatics. By working closely with our program director and a faculty mentor, you’ll gain a broad education across clinical informatics and in-depth training in your chosen subspecialties. 

Your fellowship will include:

• Face-to-face didactics sessions with faculty, supplemented with online learning
• Participation in the national clinical informatics virtual case conferences and the annual fellows’ retreat — programs created in part by our program director 
• Leadership of case conferences and journal clubs 
• Training at Epic’s Wisconsin headquarters, where you’ll earn physician builder certification

You’ll also rotate throughout the Division of Informatics, exploring the areas of:

• Information technology
• Health system
• Health plan

We encourage you to take an active role in your required and elective rotations from day one, and we’ll help you move into a leadership role during your second year. 

Working on — and leading — projects is a big part of the clinical informatics fellowship. You’ll work with the program director and a faculty mentor to select projects that meet the fellowship requirements and your interests. We expect you to choose projects related to your clinical specialty. But you’ll also broaden your scope of experience by joining projects in other clinical departments, at the clinical enterprise level and within our health plan.

Geisinger has an active research program, including Advanced Application Development, Biomedical and Translational Informatics, a Genomic Medicine Institute, healthcare analytics and a high-performance medical computing core. You’ll participate in original research, present your work at local and national meetings and publish in peer-reviewed informatics journals.

Our clinical informatics fellows also gain valuable teaching experience at Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine, working with program leadership and our faculty to educate the next generation of physicians about this evolving field.

Worried that your clinical skills might lapse?

Don’t be concerned. Our fellows practice medicine part-time — 20% of your active time, on a flexible schedule. The program director will coordinate with your clinical department to ensure your practice is meaningful but doesn’t overburden you. The fellowship is your main focus while you’re with us. Opportunities for moonlighting are also available.

Fellow projects

Developed, implemented and optimized various ordering tools:

• Emergency medicine – Protocol order set for trauma evaluation; order set for agitation and delirium.
• Pediatrics – Led a review and optimization of all order sets; created a new eating disorder order set.
• Primary care – Created primary care team referral panels for ease of ordering.
• ProvenCare® – Created a pneumonia ProvenCare order set.
• Oxygen – Revamped ordering of outpatient oxygen to standardize process; led inpatient oxygen and ventilator order redesign and consolidation.
• Sepsis – Evaluated outcomes of sepsis ordering tools and decision support systems; participated in a project to improve sepsis order set use.
• Referrals – Updated reasons for referral to medication management pharmacists to improve communication.
• Preference lists – Updated the general pediatrics user preference list to improve efficiency.
• Lab – Reconciled procedure codes for Epic’s laboratory information system.

Created, optimized and consolidated various documentation tools and templates:

• System level – Created a note tools dashboard to evaluate usage of individual templates.
• Rheumatology – Created documentation and decision support tools.
• Pediatrics – Led a project to improve pediatric inpatient flowsheet documentation; improved the newborn note template to improve efficiency and standardization; created a standardized a naming convention for pediatric EHR tools.
• Inpatient medicine – Led an inpatient note template revamp to improve efficiency; created a telemedicine inpatient note template; expanded care coordination notes.

Developed curriculum, taught various learners and improved overall efficiency with the EHR:

• System level – Created the Epic U website for EHR training and efficiency. 
• SlicerDicer – Led training on the Births Data Model for OB/GYN providers; created training programs for residents and graduate medical education programs.
• Pediatrics – Standardized pediatric letter templates.
• UME/GME – Created and led a senior medical student Epic efficiency workshop; created, implemented, and led GME Epic efficiency workshops; created and led a clinical rotation orientation to the EHR for medical students.

Improved overall efficiency for users of the EHR:

• System level – Optimized the Epic In Basket to reduce message burden for providers; implemented additional charge capture tools to help capture of lost revenue.
• Outpatient medicine – Optimized physician workflow by automating the after visit summary, saving 2 minutes per patient visit; created and optimized the advanced care planning (ACP) navigator.
• Pediatrics – Created an electronic audit process for pediatric central lines; integrated the early onset sepsis calculator into Epic; led project to create an emergency department pediatric sepsis algorithm.

Developed visualization tools and data analytics to improve provider workflows:

• System level – Validated SlicerDicer models prior to clinical use; helped improve quality and quantity of data requests.
• Pediatrics – Improved the patient summary in NICU to optimize physician workflows; created pediatric synopsis reports for providers to view all data in one place; created a childhood immunization dashboard to identify opportunities for improvement; created pediatrics provider scorecards and a quality data dashboard.
• Outpatient medicine – Created an epilepsy synopsis report to bring all information together in one place.

Researched, developed and implemented tools to improve adolescent privacy and care:

• Enabled ability to select which medications show in the patient portal for adolescent patients.
• Created pediatric questionnaires to help collect information from patients.
• Created a pediatric patient portal FAQ page to help educate patients and their parents.
• Worked on a pediatric/adolescent note revamp to improve efficiency.
• Optimized MyChart for information blocking rules for adolescent patients.

Developed tools to improve how pediatric patients interact with the healthcare system and their own data:

• Created a well child visit appointment reminder automated text to decrease no-show rates.
• Created a multidisciplinary transition process for Type 1 diabetic patients.
• Created a survey to help with transitions of care for patients with cystic fibrosis.
• Implemented a childhood vaccination improvement project to increase vaccination rates.
• Created an autism coping plan in Epic to help improve communication between care teams.