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Category: Patient Care

  • From Sea to Shining IV: OPAT Program Improves Outcomes, Decreases Hospital Readmissions

    As health care shifts from reimbursement based on numbers of patients seen or procedures performed, to reimbursement based on quality of care, the infectious diseases specialty is challenged to accurately reflect the complex, expert care that ID physicians provide. One way could be outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy, or OPAT, which monitors patients who are discharged fr … Read more

  • UNC Nephrologists Ensure Black Patients Received Equitable Access to Kidney Transplants

    April is Minority Health Month, a month to raise awareness about the need to reduce health disparities and improve the health of minority communities. The UNC Health Center for Transplant Care team and UNC Health nephrologists recently increased equitable access for the Black community by addressing and fixing a disparity among kidney transplant patients. The UNC Health Center fo … Read more

  • Cardiologists Performs First Transcatheter Tricuspid Valve Replacement in North Carolina

    John P. Vavalle, MD, MHS, FACC, and Matthew A. Cavender, MD, MPH, FACC, interventional cardiologists and their collaborative team in the Structural Heart Disease Program at UNC, have performed their first transcatheter tricuspid valve replacement in the clinical setting, a revolutionary treatment for patients living with a common type of heart valve disease. For the first time in … Read more

  • leigh-callahan

    How Exercise Can Improve Symptoms of Osteoarthritis

    Can exercise help decrease osteoarthritis pain? One would think moving your joints more frequently would increase pain related to a joint disease but in fact physical activity can lessen the symptoms of osteoarthritis. Leigh Callahan, PhD, the Mary Link Briggs Distinguished Professor of Medicine in the Division of Rheumatology, Allergy, and Immunology, and Associate Director of t … Read more

  • Dr. Buse Honored with 2024 Outstanding Physician Clinician in Diabetes Award

    The American Diabetes Association (ADA) has announced the recipients of the 2024 National Scientific and Health Care Achievement Awards, recognizing individuals who have significantly advanced diabetes care, education and research. Among the esteemed awardees is John Buse, MD, PhD, the Verne S. Caviness Distinguished Professor of Medicine in the UNC Division of Endocrinology and … Read more

  • Nicole Orzechowski

    University of North Carolina Designated as Scleroderma Research and Treatment Center

    The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has been named a Designated Scleroderma Research and Treatment Center by the National Scleroderma Foundation. This accolade positions UNC among the two centers in the state to receive such an esteemed recognition. The acknowledgment highlights UNC’s proficiency in providing care for individuals affected by scleroderma, an autoimmune … Read more

  • First comprehensive medical guideline on management of pouchitis released

    Edward Barnes, MD, MPH, co-first author, is an assistant professor in the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology and John Haydek, MD, MSCS, author, is an advanced inflammatory bowel diseases fellow. The American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) has released the first comprehensive evidence-based guideline on the management of pouchitis, the most common complication peop … Read more

  • Study by Dr. Saira Sheikh shows peer-to-peer education increases awareness, engagement, diversity in lupus clinical trials

    The Patient Advocates for Lupus Studies (PALS) Program, funded by Lupus Therapeutics the clinical research affiliate of the Lupus Research Alliance, aimed at increasing the knowledge of, positive attitudes toward, and intentions among people with lupus to join a clinical trial. These results were recently published in The Open Rheumatology Journal, the official open-access journa … Read more

  • Adult Congenital Heart Disease Program Accredited as Comprehensive Care Center

    The Adult Congenital Heart Association (ACHA) has awarded the UNC Adult Congenital Heart Disease (ACHD) Program the status of an Accredited Comprehensive Care Center. As an accredited center, UNC will be able to better serve the congenital heart disease community. Due to the advancement of pediatric cardiac surgeries and invasive procedures, patients born with congenital heart di … Read more

  • UNC Hospitals Meets Rising Need for Alcohol-Related Liver Disease

    Hersh Shroff, MD, a transplant hepatologist and assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, has seen the human impact of a recent, rising trend: Severe alcohol-related liver disease with high rates of death or need for liver transplantation. The new IHEAL Clinic at Eastowne addresses this trend. “It’s an overwhelming, scary place to be for … Read more

  • UNC Weight Management Team Receives UNC Medical Center Quality and Safety Team Award

    The UNC Weight Management Team has been awarded a UNC Medical Center Quality and Safety Team Award for their project, “Improving Obesity Treatments in Primary Care.” The project was designed to reduce the financial and geographic barriers to obesity treatments across UNC primary care clinics. The weight management team embedded three obesity trained primary care physicians in thr … Read more