Stephen D. PersellStephen D. Persell, MD, MPH received his MD from Harvard Medical School and his MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health. He completed residency training in Primary Care Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. Prior to joining the faculty at Northwestern, Dr. Persell completed a research fellowship in general internal medicine and health services research at Harvard and Brigham and Women's.
His current research focuses on the design, implementation and evaluation of practice redesign techniques, computerized clinical decision support and methods for clinician performance measurement. This work is primarily aimed at (1) advancing quality improvement systems in healthcare and (2) improving patient and clinician decision making in ambulatory settings. He has performed multiple studies using data from clinical information systems to assess various aspects of cardiovascular disease, hypertension and preventive care. He is the recipient of a 5-year AHRQ career development award examining how to improve the practice of preventive cardiology by assessing patients' cardiovascular risk using electronic health record data and integrating this information into clinical use for both clinicians and patients.
He serves on the American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology/Physicians Consortium for Performance Improvement's 2009 coronary heart disease and hypertension performance measures work group and was co-chair of the AMA's Physicians Consortium for Performance Improvement's 2008 preventive care and screening work group.
He teaches An Introduction to Healthcare Quality, a Northwetern University Graduate School course in the graduate program in Healthcare Quality and Patient Safety.
Highlighted Articles
Persell SD, Baker DW. Aspirin use among adults with diabetes: recent trends and emerging sex disparities. Arch Intern Med. 2004;164:2492-2499.
Persell SD, Maviglia SM, Bates DW, Ayanian JZ. Ambulatory hypercholesterolemia management in patients with atherosclerosis: sex and race differences in processes and outcomes. J Gen Intern Med. 2005;20;123-130.
Persell SD, Lloyd-Jones DM, Baker DW. Implications of changing National Cholesterol Education Program goals for the treatment and control of hypercholesterolemia. J Gen Intern Med. 2006;71:171-176.
Persell SD, Wright JM, Thompson JA, Kmetik KS, Baker DW. Assessing the validity of national quality measures for coronary artery disease using an electronic health record. Arch Intern Med. 2006;166:2272-2277.
Baker DW, Persell SD, Thompson JA, Soman NS, Burgner KM, Liss D, Kmetik KS. Automated review of electronic health records to assess quality of care for outpatients with heart failure. Ann Intern Med. 2007;146:270-277.
Persell SD, Osborn CY, Richard R, Skripkauskas, S, Wolf MS. Limited health literacy is a barrier to medication reconciliation in ambulatory care. J Gen Intern Med. 2007; 22:1523-1526.
Persell SD, Denecke-Dattalo TA,Dunham DP, Baker DW. Patient-directed intervention versus clinician reminders alone to improve aspirin use in diabetes: a cluster randomized trial. Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf. 2008;34:98-105.
Persell SD, Kho AN, Thompson JA, Baker DW. Improving hypertension quality measurement using electronic health records. Med Care. 2009;47:388-394.
Persell SD, Dunne A, Lloyd-Jones DM, Baker DW. Electronic health record-based cardiac risk assessment and identification of unmet preventive needs. Med Care. 2009;47:418-424.
Persell SD, Bailey SC, Tang J, Davis TC, Wolf MS. Medication reconciliation and hypertension control. Am J Med. 2010;123:182.e9-e15.
Persell SD, Dolan NC, Friesema EM, Thompson JA, Kaiser D, Baker DW. Frequency of inappropriate medical exceptions to quality measures. Ann Intern Med. 2010;152:225-231.
Persell SD, Zei C, Cameron KA, Zielinski M, Lloyd-Jones DM. Potential use of 10-year and lifetime coronary risk information for preventive cardiology prescribing decisions: a primary care physician survey. Arch Intern Med. 2010;170:470-477.
