Clinical

CLINICAL: Endocrinology & Metabolism

The division’s clinical faculty have a wide range of expertise, including:

• diabetes mellitus (and diabetes-related cardiovascular disease)
• obesity and related metabolic disorders
• thyroid disease (including thyroid nodule and cancer)
• hypertension/adrenal disease
• metabolic bone disease/calcium disorders
• neuroendocrinology/pituitary disease
• reproductive endocrinology/infertility
• endocrine disease (e.g., diabetes) in pregnancy
• benign breast disease/breast cancer prevention.

Because the UVA Health System is a tertiary care referral center, patients come from a large geographic area, including central, western, and southwestern Virginia and parts of West Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina. The division’s clinical faculty provide over 4,300 inpatient consults at UVA Hospital each year. Its largest outpatient clinic, located at Fontaine Research Park, handles 20,000 patient visits to the endocrine clinic each year. Division physicians also provide care at the Northridge, Augusta and Crozet multispecialty clinic locations. The Diabetes Education and Management Program (DEMP) offers diabetes and nutrition training to patients as well as to nurse educators and dietitians.

Two quality-related projects were initiated in the past year: the goal of the first is to ensure that all diabetic patients seen in the endocrinology clinic have an annual urine albumin/creatinine ratio measurement; the goal of the second, to see that all diabetic patients have a comprehensive foot exam at least annually, and a peripheral foot exam at each visit. Protocols for these initiatives are being implemented. Future goals include continued improvements in the management of inpatient diabetes cases to decrease incidence of insulin-induced hypoglycemia and reduce length of stay and readmissions, and the establishment of a diabetes registry of patients treated at UVA hospital.