Faculty & Staff

David Meltzer, MD, PhD
Program Director, Comprehensive Care Physician (CCP) Program and Comprehensive Care, Community, and Culture Program (C4P); Co-Director, UChicago Health Lab; Chief, Section of Hospital Medicine; Professor, Medicine, Economics and Public Policy
Dr. Meltzer is Director of Comprehensive Care Physician (CCP) Program at the University of Chicago, where he is the Fanny L. Pritzker Professor in the Department of Medicine, Department of Economics and the Harris School of Public Policy Studies. He also serves at the University as the Chief of the Section of Hospital Medicine, Director of the Center for Health and the Social Sciences, and Director of the Health Lab within the Urban Labs. Learn more about Dr. Meltzer by visiting his CHeSS page here.

Micah Prochaska, MD, MS
Assistant Professor of Medicine
Dr. Prochaska’s research focuses on how hospital-based interventions affect patient-reported outcomes for chronic diseases longitudinally after hospital discharge. He is currently supported by a K23 grant from the NHLBI to study how red blood cell transfusion for hospitalized patients with anemia affects their fatigue, activity, and fatigability levels after they have been discharged from the hospital. Dr. Prochaska is also interested in the development, utilization, and sustainability of longitudinal clinical data research networks. He helps direct the University of Chicago Hospitalist Project research infrastructure as well as he has been involved in the implementation and integration of the Chicago Area Patient Centered Outcomes Research Network (CAPriCORN) into clinical research at the University of Chicago. He is a Co-Director of the University of Chicago Translational Medicine Program and the Cultivating Health & Aging Researchers by Integrating Science, Medicine, & Aging (CHARISMA) Program.

Vineet Arora, MD, MAPP
Professor of Medicine; Director of GME Clinical Learning Environment Innovation; Assistant Dean for Scholarship and Discovery
Dr. Vineet Arora is Professor of Medicine, Director of the Graduate Medical Education (GME) Clinical Learning Environment Innovation, and Assistant Dean for Scholarship & Discovery at the University of Chicago. She is an academic hospitalist and leader in testing novel educational and systems interventions to improve quality, safety, and value of care delivered in teaching hospitals. She has made significant contributions to the understanding of how to improve patient handoffs and optimize resident sleep and fatigue through long shifts. Currently, Dr. Arora is leading an NHLBI study of sleep and physical activity trajectories in and out of the hospital for vulnerable older patients and their role in recovery. As a Macy Faculty Scholar, Dr. Arora is also leading the evaluation of IGNITE (Improving GME Nursing Interprofessional Team Experiences), which enables residents, nurses, and other professionals to work in high-reliability teams aligned with institutional priorities to improve patient care.

Gregory Ruhnke, MD, MS, MPH
Assistant Professor, Section of Hospital Medicine
As a clinician-investigator trained in economics, health services research (HSR), and clinical effectiveness, Dr. Ruhnke provides clinical care to hospitalized patients, during which time he teaches clinical medicine to residents and medical students. He also teaches a course entitled “The American Health Care System” at the Pritzker School of medicine and serves as the physician lead for the pneumonia quality subcommittee at UCM. His research focuses on: (1) the measurement of outcomes, quality, and resource utilization among community-acquired pneumonia patients; (2) patient-centered outcomes research – the impact of clinical characteristics, practice patterns, patient-centered attributes of care, and system-level factors on decision-making, utilization and patient-reported outcomes; (3) the comprehensive care physician model of integrated care for patients at increased risk of hospitalization.

Tamar Polonsky, MD
Assistant Professor of Medicine
Tamar Polonsky, MD, MSCI, is a general cardiologist. She treats a wide range of cardiac conditions, including coronary artery disease, hypertension, hyperlipidemia (high cholesterol), and valve disease. Dr. Polonsky also specializes in the management of heart disease in cancer patients. She works closely with oncologists and surgeons to take care of patients with preexisting heart disease and to help monitor for potential cardiac complications from chemotherapy and radiation. Dr. Polonsky has research expertise in cardiovascular epidemiology and prevention. She has experience analyzing data from large cohort studies, with the aim of finding novel ways to predict a person’s risk of developing heart disease.

Thomas Best, PhD
Manager of Research and Analytics
Dr. Best supports research and quality improvement for the CCP Program through his role as Manager of Research and Analytics in the UChicago Center for Health and the Social Sciences (CHeSS). He enjoys using data to develop a clearer understanding of what makes the CCP Program successful and how we can continue to make it even better. He holds a PhD in Operations Management from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and a Masters of Health Systems Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Alexandra Tate, PhD
Research Supervisor, Postdoctoral Fellow
As a medical sociologist, Alex’s research uses both qualitative and quantitative approaches to examine the implementation of health care policies for aging patients in the U.S. Her interests lie in the complexities of doctor-patient interaction and the related implications for care of older adults, with a current focus on the therapeutic relationship between clinicians and patients with complex illnesses. Her current research projects investigate the integration of end-of-life care, decision-making in oncology, and mental health treatment in primary care. 

Andrea Flores, MA
Senior Statistical Programmer
Andrea has over 10 years of experience in health services research and has been part of the CCP team since its beginning in 2012. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of Chile and a Master’s degree in Public Policy from the University of Chicago. She has extensive experience working with large and complex data sets and is skilled in assembling, linking and analyzing data to evaluate results of observational studies and randomized control trials. As a Sr. Programmer Analyst for the CCP study, Andrea has a leading role in managing data collection and processing procedures for data analysis. Andrea’s interests include program evaluation, survey methodology, health assessment tools and geographical information systems.