New Faculty

Dr. Robert Young joins the Department of Medicine

Robert Young, MD

Dr. Young attended the University of Delaware and graduated magna cum laude. He received his medical degree at Jefferson Medical College, also graduating magna cum laude. He trained at Boston University Medical Center for his internship and completed his residency at ChristianaCare in Delaware. Later he obtained a Masters in Health Service and Outcomes Research at Northwestern University and geriatrics training at Indiana University. He is also a graduate of the Intermountain Healthcare Advanced Training Program in quality improvement and has received innovation and implementation science training at Indiana University.

Dr. Young is a geriatrics hospitalist who is passionate about making healthcare systems more age friendly. This desire arose from his involvement in hospital-based quality improvement at the local, regional, and national level and the recognition that hospitalized elders are a large vulnerable population at high risk of iatrogenic harm. To address these safety issues at scale, he is interested in using hospital medicine as a platform to deliver geriatrics care to hospitalized elders, including delivering acute care services at home. From his experience in hospital medicine and home-based primary care, he seeks to improve patient outcomes and experience through the development of hospital at home programs within hospital medicine. In addition, with his experiences as a Medical Director of an Acute Care for Elders co-management service, he is also interested in improving the diagnosis and treatment of delirium, optimizing post-acute care transitions, and incorporating geriatric frameworks into existing unit-base interprofessional teams to better address patient and caregiver’s social determinants of health needs. Out of these efforts he aims to co-produce educational programs for medical learners to improve complex patient outcomes. Learners will also be introduced to population health and other health system science principles to develop their system-based practice competencies.

Finally, he hopes to utilize implementation science, industrial engineering, and cognitive psychology (e.g., human factors engineering and behavioral economics) frameworks and principles to more rapidly, efficiently, and sustainably translate evidence-based geriatric interventions to the patient’s bedside. With rigorous evaluation and outcomes measurement, he desires to identify successful programs which can be disseminated to improve elder care in our nation’s hospitals. Dr. Young ‘s key Interests are Hospital Medicine, Geriatrics, Hospital at Home, Post-Acute Care Transitions, and Population health and his research Interest is Implementation Science.