James L. Rosenzweig, M.D.
James L. Rosenzweig, M.D., is the Director of the Office of Disease Management at Joslin, a Staff Physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He received his medical degree from the Yale School of Medicine, and completed postdoctoral training at the Barnes Hospital, Washington University School of Medicine. He is a Member of the Clinical Guidelines Subcommittee of the Endocrine Society and the Diabetes Work Group, Physicians’ Consortium for Performance Improvement of the American Medical Association.
To ensure that patients with diabetes receive the best care, Dr. Rosenzweig focuses on primary care providers and other professionals who are often the entry point for patients into the healthcare system. Dr. Rosenzweig develops programs to measure the performance of providers and, where necessary, help them improve their monitoring of patients so they can diagnose and triage patients into appropriate care pathways according to risk.
In a pilot program to improve the care of African-American patients with diabetes, Dr. Rosenzweig is overseeing a collaboration with providers in four clinics in the Mississippi Delta, where the incidence of diabetes is twice the national average and where most patients do not receive adequate healthcare. The clinics are linked to each other and to Joslin via a Web-based computer information system. Patient-care data, information and recommendations are transmitted over the Internet (with privacy protection) so that clinics can compare their performance and communicate with each other as well as with experts at Joslin. The program, which began in late 2003, involves nearly 10,000 patients, and Dr. Rosenzweig hopes to expand its scope.
As Chairperson of the Joslin Clinical Oversight Committee, Dr. Rosenzweig works with other Joslin physicians, nurses and educators to develop clinical guidelines to ensure optimal care of patients with diabetes at Joslin and in the community. He also is active as a leader of the National Diabetes Quality Improvement Alliance, an organization that sets the standards for measuring physician performance in diabetes care throughout the United States. In his other role as Chairman of Joslin’s Human Studies Committee, Dr. Rosenzweig ensures that all research studies involving patients are conducted ethically and with appropriate informed consent and confidentiality.
Selected References
Rosenzweig JL, Weinger K, Poirier-Solomon L, Rushton M. Use of a disease severity index for evaluation of healthcare costs and management of comorbidities of patients with diabetes mellitus. Am J Manag Care 8:950-958, 2002.
Rosenzweig J, Celeste-Harris S, Weinger K, Connor D, Bonsignore P, Garland J. Computers and diabetes: Using a web-based risk stratification approach. Diabetes Technol Ther, Vol. 5, 2003. 2nd Annual Diabetes Technology Meeting, Atlanta, Oct 31, 2002.
