Katie Raffel, MD
Internal Medicine
Locations
Practice Locations
UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital (UCH)
720-848-0000
Provider Expertise
Clinical Interest for Patients
I am an institutional quality leader focused on improving high-risk inpatient care by building learning systems that last. My work centers on aligning people, processes, and data to address complex problems in ways that are practical, team-based, and sustainable. A core part of my leadership is developing others. I was part of the inaugural UCSF Learning Health System Coaching Program, a two-year intensive focused on Lean training, mentorship, and system-wide improvement. Currently, I serve as Medical Director for Inpatient Medicine Units at UCHealth, where I lead interprofessional safety and improvement efforts across six medicine units serving nearly 150 patients. I am also core faculty at the Institute for Healthcare Quality, Safety, and Efficiency, where I teach and coach teams to build durable improvement capability. Through IHQSE, I am honored to serve as the director of the Health Quality Leadership Fellowship.
Specialties
- Internal Medicine
Education & Training
Medical Schools
MD, University of Chicago Division of the Biological Sciences The Pritzker School of Medicine (2013)
Undergraduate Schools
BS, Xavier University (OH) (2009)
Internships
University of California (San Francisco) School of Medicine Program (2014)
Residency Program
University of California (San Francisco) School of Medicine Program (2017)
Research & Grants
Research Interests for Patients
My research focuses on understanding how diagnostic errors occur in hospitalized adults and how health systems can learn from high-risk clinical events to improve care. I was a core member of the UPSIDE study, an AHRQ-funded, multi-site effort that helped establish the prevalence and causes of diagnostic error in acute care settings, particularly during moments of clinical deterioration. This work led to the creation of the Achieving Diagnostic Excellence through Prevention and Teamwork (ADEPT) collaborative, a 14-hospital network dedicated to improving how diagnostic accuracy is measured, studied, and strengthened in everyday hospital practice. Beyond advancing the science of diagnostic improvement, the collaborative emphasizes building human and organizational capacity for diagnostic safety. In partnership with the Institute for Healthcare Quality, Safety, and Efficiency (IHQSE), this commitment resulted in the launch of the Diagnostic Excellence Capacity Building Program—the first program of its kind designed to develop leaders and teams capable of sustaining diagnostic improvement within their institutions.
