Basic

Saul Weiner, MD, is professor of medicine, pediatrics and medical education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and deputy director of the Center of Innovation for Complex Chronic Health Care, Veterans Health Administration. He has served as medical education dean, university vice provost and currently is senior advisor to the provost.

Dr. Weiner’s research focuses on identifying and preventing contextual errors in clinical decision making and care planning. He has developed strategies for identifying contextual errors, measuring their impact on health outcomes and costs, and on preventing them.  His research extensively employs unannounced standardized patients, patients who audio record their visits, and clinical decision support tools enhanced with contextual information in the electronic medical record.  He currently leads studies funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality. Dr. Weiner is the University of Illinois at Chicago 2013 Distinguished Researcher of the Year in the Clinical Sciences.  His recent book Listening for What Matters: Avoiding Contextual Errors in Health Care (Oxford University Press) received the 2017 American Publishers Award for Professional & Scholarly Excellence (PROSE) in the life sciences from the American Association of Publishers.  His forthcoming book, On Becoming a Healer: The Journey from Patient Care to Caring About Your Patients, will be published by Johns Hopkins University Press.

His research has been translated into practice in a variety of settings, including a national initiative he leads to improve care and services to homeless veterans in over 30 cities. He also co-founded and serves as president of the Institute for Practice and Provider Improvement (I3PI) which applies methods of directly observed care, currently in partnership with the American College of Physicians and Blue Cross Blue Shield, to health plans and individual practices seeking to enhance value based care.

Dr. Weiner is a graduate of Harvard College, and Dartmouth Medical School. He completed his residency at the University of Chicago, and is a former Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Generalist Physician Faculty Scholar.