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Adornato looks to the future
Settling
in to his new position as vice president of the medical staff, neurologist
Bruce Adornato foresees some tough
challenges ahead for Stanford Hospital.
"The increasing costs and complexity of medical care make it harder to deliver excellent patient care and ensure accessibility, especially in the face of decreasing reimbursement and increased competition for dwindling resources," said Adornato, who will succeed current staff president Raymond Gaeta in two years. "We need to increase our efficiency and find ways to reduce costs without sacrificing quality."
Adornato pointed to online record keeping and the new physician order entry system as steps in the right direction. Revising the drug formulary and changing surgical operating hours are examples of other cost-savings methods.
Improving physician communication is another challenge, he said. "Patients benefit when physicians can easily connect with one another and exchange ideas. As more physicians become purely hospital- or community-based, however, there is less chance for communication. We need to create more opportunities for physicians to communicate."
Adornato suggested making medical staff meetings more interactive and alternating meeting times between mornings and evenings to enable more people to attend. He said he would also like to create a physician resource room near the Medical Records office where physicians could meet informally to talk and share ideas. Another goal is increasing the presence of the patient Health Library within the hospital.
Adornato has a long history with Stanford. He joined the clinical faculty in 1978 and currently serves as deputy chief of the Department of Neurology. He practiced for five years at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation before leaving in 1983 for private neurology practice. In 1986, Adornato co-founded the first accredited sleep clinic in San Francisco at California Pacific Medical Center and oversaw its sale to Stanford in 1996. He graduated from UC-San Diego medical school in 1972 and completed a residency in internal medicine and neurology at UCSF and a neurology fellowship at the National Institutes of Health.
