Daniel J. Dickinson, MD, MPH
Vice President, Complex Care Solutions, Sentara Ambulatory Division
Over the past two years, Dr. Daniel Dickinson has led an effort to transform how Sentara cares for its sickest, frailest and most vulnerable patients, whether they’re living at home or hospitalized.
Dr. Dickinson’s job is to design and evaluate innovative delivery models that unite physicians and leaders from multiple departments within Sentara, including nursing, pharmacy, home health, behavioral health, social work, palliative care, hospice and Optima health plan.
In a push toward high-quality integrated care management, Sentara also has added a HIPAA-protected technology platform called Unite Us, which can link patients to needed community-based services such as financial or legal assistance, transportation, food and housing.
The overall goal is to improve patient access, experiences, education and outcomes within a more cost-effective, sustainable model.
“In a nutshell, we’re taking skilled multi-disciplinary teams and putting everyone together on one big team,” Dr. Dickinson says. “Teamwork and communication are so crucial to matching these patients with the services they need, as soon as they need them.”
In early 2020, Dr. Dickinson became Vice President for Complex Care Solutions after serving 11 years as an internist with Sentara and six as its Medical Director for Clinical Integration. His leadership already has paid off with results such as falling hospital readmission rates, improved management of chronic illnesses, and better medication compliance.
With extensive experience in medicine, public health and epidemiology, Dr. Dickinson is helping create new secure communication channels to replace older systems that saw individual providers and departments often working alone. That fragmentation could lead to both gaps in care and unnecessary repetition of services.
A Virginia Beach native, Dr. Dickinson is the son of a cardiologist and worked as an operating room orderly by high school. He majored in biology at the University of Virginia, went on to the Duke University School of Medicine and later earned a Master of Public Health degree from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Dr. Dickinson has held various posts during his career: at a Nepalese clinic through a church ministry, in primary care and hospital medicine practice on the Eastern Shore for 12 years, and with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Virginia Department of Health.
At the CDC, Dr. Dickinson handled population-based investigations into HIV/AIDS and STDs. Collecting and sharing detailed data on Sentara patients – such as daily blood sugar levels for diabetics or blood pressure readings for hypertensive patients – is critical to his current efforts.
The Complex Care leadership team meets every two weeks and reports on progress and results; individual teams within the program meet daily. Members communicate with individual patients using an Electronic Medical Records (EMR) system.
“We developed a longitudinal care plan within the EMR that highlights the specific action of each team for any given patient,” Dr. Dickinson explains. “It is a continuous care plan updated at inpatient, outpatient and other encounters, to orient caregivers from other teams of patient interventions.”
One focus area has been the transition from hospital to home-based care. The Sentara to Home initiative, launched in April 2020, features hospitalists and nurses who perform virtual visits, remote patient monitoring and home visits on patients after discharge.
Sentara has enrolled about 250 patients to date and recorded a 50 percent reduction in readmission rates.
Dr. Dickinson is hopeful that the future will bring more such good news: “Everybody is excited about what we’re doing. This is a journey that will take time, but if we can build a well-coordinated, affordable system to serve future generations better, we will have met our goals.”
Outstanding Achievements recognizes a local physician for accomplishments in the areas of education, medical innovations or introduction of new treatments and technologies to the region. It is our honor to recognize these accomplishments.
Please let us know if there is a physician who deserves recognition in this column. Email: holly@hrphysician.com
