Dec. 12, 2018

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce the appointment of Michele Lossius, M.D., FAAP, as chief quality officer for the UF Health Shands hospitals and associated clinical programs, effective Jan. 7.

Dr. Lossius is well-known to our institution: She obtained her undergraduate and medical degrees from UF and completed residency training in pediatrics at UF Health Shands Hospital. In 2006, she joined our faculty in the UF College of Medicine department of pediatrics in the division of pediatric critical care. She was promoted to division chief of pediatric hospital medicine in 2013 and has served as the physician director of quality and safety for pediatrics.

Her commitment to quality and safety has been evident: She participated in TeamStepps Master Training and AAMC Teaching For Quality training. She also completed the Patient Safety Executive Development Program at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and the Intermountain Advanced Training Program in HealthCare Delivery Improvement.

As pediatric hospital medicine division chief, Dr. Lossius has spearheaded novel and innovative programs in education and safety. Clinically, Dr. Lossius is involved with national projects related to bronchiolitis management, adverse drug events and fever in the neonate. Her success lead to invitations to coach and then lead the subsequent national initiatives addressing the care of patients with bronchiolitis by the American Academy of Pediatrics. As the pediatrics physician director of quality and safety, she has worked to reduce variation in care, decrease length of stay, establish protocols and develop strong working relationships across the institution.

In the chief quality officer role, reporting to the chief medical officer for UF Health Shands, Dr. Lossius will provide strategic oversight for quality and patient-centered improvement efforts for our Gainesville hospitals and hospital-operated outpatient programs. She will collaborate with our teams in the UF Health Sebastian Ferrero Office of Clinical Quality and Patient Safety, including Clinical Risk Management, Quality Accreditation, Patient Experience and Quality Clinical Analytics. In addition, as CQO she will support and work with the College of Medicine physician directors of quality and quality liaisons working in other disciplines, including hospital nursing and operations and College of Medicine clinical departments.

The CQO will guide organizational efforts to achieve outstanding performance on key quality and safety metrics, integrate and engage residents and other learners in quality and safety work, engage patients and families, help maintain a positive culture of quality improvement and be a catalyst for shared learning. Dr. Lossius will promote a unified approach between executive leaders, nursing and operations teams and College of Medicine clinical faculty and residents to achieve our quality and safety goals.

We sincerely thank Eric Rosenberg, M.D., who has served as interim director of quality. Dr. Rosenberg is a UF Health Shands associate chief medical officer, a College of Medicine professor of medicine and the chief of the division of general internal medicine.

Please join us in welcoming Dr. Lossius to this executive role to help shape the vision and strategy for quality as Job 1 across our clinical and academic programs.

Sincerely,

David R. Nelson, M.D.
Interim Senior Vice President for Health Affairs, UF
Interim President, UF Health

Parker Gibbs, M.D.
Eugene L. Jewett Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery, UF College of Medicine
Chief Medical Officer, UF Health Shands

Joseph A. Tyndall, M.D., M.P.H.
Professor and Interim Dean
UF College of Medicine

Ed Jimenez
CEO
UF Health Shands