Academic year 2005-2006 has been another banner year for the Division of Endocrinology, on the academic, patient care, administrative front, teaching, training, and the national and international recognition fronts. With 33 faculty members, the Division is without question one of the largest, strongest and most stable in the US, and is a leader in academic, didactic and clinical endocrinology.

Clinical Care.  The Endocrinology Division now provides endocrinology consultations and care at Presbyterian, Montefiore, Shadyside, Magee Hosptials as well as the Pittsburgh VA.   Visits to the endocrine clinics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and UPMC continue to increase, surpassing 1200 visits per month this year at our Falk Endocrinology Clinic alone.  Clinical revenues are increasing in parallel and clinical operations operate on a balanced budget.  In recognition of this, UPMC leadership has expanded nursing and support staff substantially, is expanding the clinic space from 4000 to 7000 sf, and expanded the number of designated full time clinical endocrinologists from seven to ten, complemented by nine additional research-oriented MD faculty, who also perform clinical patient care.   This means that the 19 MD faculty, together with the 14 PhD faculty, comprise one of the largest Endocrinology Divisions in the US.  Over the past two or three years, we have also developed a new and fully-staffed inpatient diabetes hospitalist service, comprised of an attending endocrinologist, two nurse practitioners and a designated clinical fellow, as well as residents and students.  In addition to these services at UPMC, five Division endocrinologists provide outpatient and inpatient care at the Pittsburgh VA Medical Center.  In regional terms, we have developed and validated a database of 90,000 patients with diabetes cared for in the 19 UPMC hospitals and their associated outpatient facilities and clinics in western Pennsylvania.  Remarkably, this is the largest diabetes registry of unselected patients in the US.  (Medicare, the VA and Kaiser-Permanente have larger, but demographically selected diabetes registries.)  We have also developed the second or third largest ADA-certified diabetes educator network in the US.  Working with this University of Pittsburgh Diabetes Institute Registry and ADA-Certified Diabetes Education Network, we have launched quality improvement initiatives on a scale not possible in almost any other hospital system.  We have also implemented system-wide computer-based physician order-entry initiatives targeting the inpatient management of hypoglycemia and sliding scale management of hyperglycemia, and also to site-specific and physician-specific reporting of ADA management targets.  These have led to marked, large scale improvements in the management and outcomes relating to hypoglycemia, hospital length of stay, and achievement of compliance targets for diabetes management.  Compliance measures and outcomes system-wide far exceed national averages and ADA guidelines.  Finally, five of our clinicians were ranked among the Best Doctors in the US.  Finally, over the past year, Dr. Haruko Kuffner has established a Thyroid Cancer Registry which includes some 3000 patients making it one of the two or three largest in the US.  We currently care for approximately 600 patients with thyroid cancer in our outpatient clinic.

Research.  Research continues to expand in the Division. In FY ’05, faculty within the Division received a total of $9,500,000 in research support from the NIH, the ADA, the JDRF, the AHA the VA, and from pharmaceutical trials, with the large majority coming from the NIH.  All 15 research faculty cover all or most of their salary from NIH grants, and the remainder is covered by the VA and private foundations.  Areas of clinical research excellence include clinical diabetes, obesity, calcium metabolism and osteoporosis, and thyroid cancer.  Areas of excellence in basic research include diabetes, insulin resistance, pancreatic beta cell function, survival and regeneration, osteoblast and osteoclast biology, and arterial smooth muscle in health and disease.  Research is supported by an NIH Training Grant, now in its 38th year, and which was recently renewed, by the NIH-funded General Clinical Research Center, and by the NIH-funded Obesity and Nutrition Research Center.  Outstanding facilities for microarray gene profiling, DNA and protein synthesis and sequencing, animal care, proteomics, cellular imaging, and bioinformatics and biostatistics are available.  Remarkably, Drs. Kelley, Greenspan, Stewart within the Division, and Drs. David Roodman and Mark Sperling who closely collaborate with Division members all have had one or more papers in the New England Journal of Medicine in the past year.  From a research perspective, then, the Division clearly ranks among the top ten in the US.  This excellence in research within the Division is complemented by the NIH ranking of the overall University of Pittsburgh, which ranked #6 out of 130 US Medical Institutions in NIH support for 2004, the most recent year for which these numbers are available.

Teaching and Training.  Division faculty rank among the best in the Medical School once again in both the second year medical students course, and also among resident and fellow teaching.  In parallel, improvements in the quality and quantity of applicants for the fellowship has increased dramatically over the past five years.  For example, for fellowship training slots beginning both in July 2005 and 2006, we received approximately 140-150 applicants per year, interviewed 10-12, and selected three to four per year.  Of eight positions offered in the past two years, seven applicants accepted this program.  Thus, 140-150 applicants compete for 3-4 slots per year.  Recent and current fellows have trained at Columbia, Brown, Pitt, Penn, Jefferson, Cornell, Harvard and other excellent institutions.  Training in clinical endocrinology is intense, rich, high-volume, and exceptionally diverse.  Teaching and supervision are equally outstanding.  Clinical care is also outstanding, and occurs at the University, Magee Women’s Hospital, Shadyside Hospital, Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, and the Oakland VA Medical Center.  Training excellence is documented by a 100% passage rate on the Endocrinology Board exams for the past 28 years, by the large proportion of training graduates who enter academic careers, and by the recent excellent score of our NIH Training Grant which will allow another five years of training support.  A concrete example of the excellence in teaching is Dr. Rao’s winning (again!) the Distinguished Housestaff Teacher Award for the Department of Medicine.

For the enitre annual report, please click the link below labeled "Annual Report 2006".