Kierstin Cates Kennedy, MD, MSHA is the Chief Medical Officer and Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. A 1,207 bed quaternary hospital and academic health science center, UAB Hospital is the 8th largest hospital in the US and serves as the only ACS verified Level I Trauma Center in the state of Alabama.
Dr. Kennedy previously served as the Chief of Hospital Medicine at the UAB (2018-2021) and Director of Quality for Hospital Medicine (2014-2018). Under her leadership Hospital Medicine reached its highest CMI and lowest mean observed to expected mortality (and the institution’s lowest sepsis O/E mortality overall), established accountable care units to drive improvements in quality and operations yielding consistently improved service-wide discharges before 1pm from 18% to 37%, and celebrated the institution’s lowest physician attrition rate (1%). She also created the UAB Procedure Service which has decreased time to procedure by >50% with a 93% procedure success rate and <0.2% complication rate. She also went on to create the UAB Comprehensive Vascular Access Team (CVAT), a multidisciplinary consult team designed to reduce delays in obtaining vascular access ranging from peripheral IVs to central venous catheters. As Medical Director for Compliant Documentation Management Program (2013-2016) she spearheaded clinical education for coders to improve coding accuracy, bridged communication with physicians to ensure accuracy in HAC/PSI reporting and streamlined the query response process to improve physician/APP response rates from 77% to a sustained 100% response rate.
Dr. Kennedy graduated from the UAB Heersink School of Medicine in 2007 and completed her combined Internal Medicine-Pediatrics residency training at UAB Hospital. She completed the Executive Masters of Science in Health Administration program at UAB in 2011 and went on to complete a fellowship in quality improvement via the VA Quality Scholars Fellowship in Birmingham, AL.
Dr. Kennedy is a member of the Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM) Board of Directors and both course director and faculty for the SHM Leadership Academy. She is also faculty for the SHM/SGIM Academic Hospitalist Academy, an annual four-day meeting aimed at developing early academic hospitalists’ career skills. She speaks nationally on leadership topics such as conflict resolution for leaders, emotional intelligence, building high performing teams and leveraging positive psychology to drive quality improvement, and teaches physicians and students from around the US how to safely perform ultrasound guided bedside procedures. She is a past winner of the UAB Heersink School of Medicine.
