Dr. Madeline McCrary joined the Department of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases as an Assistant Professor as of September 2023. She specializes in clinical infectious diseases and addiction medicine with a focus on improving the multidisciplinary care of patients who use drugs (PWUD). She completed her medical school at the University of North Carolina (UNC) School of Medicine, internal medicine residency at ChristianaCare in northern Delaware, then returned to UNC for her infectious diseases and addiction medicine fellowships. Dr. McCrary is particularly interested in developing and implementing novel Hepatitis C (HCV) treatment models to better engage rural PWUD in HCV care that can then be scalable to other populations. During her ID and addiction medicine clinical training, she started several initiatives to improve HCV treatment access for patients admitted to the hospital. As an ID fellow and with mentorship through the UNC Institute for Healthcare Quality Improvement fellowship, she created a novel program to coordinate and initiate HCV treatment during hospitalization for patients admitted with drug use-related infections.
She then expanded the model to include patients admitted to the Hospital Medicine services, which evolved into a multidisciplinary initiative to implement universal opt-out inpatient HIV/HCV screening and linkage-to-care. She was also involved in several other quality improvement projects related to the care of hospitalized PWUD, including a pilot OPAT program for this population. In addition to her clinical and programmatic activities, she has also been involved in medical student, resident and fellow education through teaching and supervision on the consult services, didactics and case-based presentations focused on the care of PWUD and Hepatitis C. Dr. McCrary will serve as the Medical Director for the OPAT program, attend on the inpatient services and participate in the Bridge to Health clinic. She also hopes to integrate in-person ID services into the perinatal substance use clinic at WashU (CARE clinic) with the aim to help improve HCV treatment outcomes in pregnant women and mom/baby dyads after delivery. Her key interests are clinical infectious diseases, addiction medicine, drug use-related infections, quality improvement, implementation science and telehealth and her research areas are development and implementation of novel Hepatitis C (HCV) treatment models including inpatient coordination and treatment initiation, treatment in pregnancy and retention in care for mom/baby dyads and improving the multidisciplinary care and transitions of care for patients who use drugs.