David E Willens, MD, MPH, FACP

Biographical Statement

Dr. Willens is passionate. First about caring for patients as he would his own family. And second about improving our health systems to do the same via the “Quintuple Aim:” better quality, lower cost, greater equity, and improved patient and care team experiences. He serves as the Vice Chair of Quality and Safety and the Division Head for General Internal Medicine in the Department of Medicine at Henry Ford Hospital and the Henry Ford Medical Group. As a clinician-educator, he cares for patients in ambulatory and inpatient internal medicine settings with residents, medical students, and other health trainees. Dr. Willens specializes in team-based care for patients with multiple chronic conditions. He brings interdisciplinary teams together to work on some of health care’s toughest challenges such as top-of-license multidisciplinary patient care and coordination of the care continuum. Outside of work, he loves spending time outdoors with his family and friends.

Titles

• Vice Chair of Quality and Safety, Department of Medicine, Henry Ford Medical Group & Hospital
• Division Head, General Internal Medicine, Henry Ford Medical Group & Hospital

Research Interests

As a clinician-leader, I am skilled in applying principles of quality improvement (QI) and high reliability clinical design to team-based care for complex and chronic biopsychosocial conditions. I am currently the Vice Chair for Quality and Safety and Division Head of the General Internal Medicine at Henry Ford Hospital and Medical Group. I am also the co-founder of the Primary Care Research Institute at Henry Ford Health. My work in all these positions is to bring more rigor to the design and evaluation of operational healthcare delivery programs, especially in primary care and population health. Most of my work has been in Detroit, Michigan with a lens on social drivers of health. I’ve led or contributed to programs and publications in team-care for diabetes in primary care, behavioral health integration into primary care, provision of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis in primary care, and patient screening for health literacy.

As a clinician-educator, I have experience in curriculum design and teaching quality improvement, epidemiology, evidence-based medicine, and primary care continuing medical education. Research in medical education is more important than ever, because it must ultimately lead to clinicians who can drive high quality, safe patient care and care systems.