Congratulations to Dr. Lynne McCullough for winning the 2017 AWAEM Emergency Department Director Award!  This award is given to honor female faculty who serve as ED medical directors who have shown significant career achievements in EM, through administrative innovations, advancing quality, safety, and efficiency of care, and building relationships or consensus across departments. In particular, the award will recognize female ED Directors who have improved working environments in their departments.

Dr. McCullough is a Clinical Professor of Emergency Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the Medical Director for the Saperstein Emergency Department in the Ronald Reagan Hospital in Westwood. She is board certified in Emergency Medicine, and continues to care for patients in the Emergency Department, while teaching medical students and residents.

As a physician informaticist, and one of the lead physicians for the ASAP implementation (EPIC’s application for Emergency Medicine), Dr. McCullough helped to guide the transition of Emergency Department workflows for all staff, including nursing, clerks, social workers, case managers and registration, as well as the development of documentation and order set build for the Emergency Departments of the UCLA Health System. She has continued to assist with the ambulatory wave go-lives and supported UCSF for their go-live with EPIC as well. In 2015, she achieved board certification in Clinical Informatics from the American Board of Medical Informatics.

Dr. McCullough holds several other leadership positions within the UCLA Health System, as the Medical Director for the Adult Medical Transport team, the Medical Director for the UCLA Health System automatic defibrillator program, and is the Emergency Medicine representative to the Ambulatory Practice Clinical Associates (APCA) group. She is on the Executive Medical Staff Council and an Innvovations Officer for the Health System. Dr. McCullough’s interests include operational process improvement through workflow re-design, including the development of a home grown scribe program, as well as quality of care and patient safety initiatives that maximize tools available in the EHR.

Dr. McCullough received her BA in Cultural Anthropology from University of California, at San Diego, and her MD from the University of California at Los Angeles. She completed her Transitional Internship at Harbor-UCLA, followed by Emergency Medicine Residency, and a chief residency year at UCLA. Following her training, she completed a 1 year Academic Teaching Fellowship at UCLA to prepare her to become the Associate Residency Director for the UCLA/Olive View-UCLA Emergency Medicine residency for 7 years prior to becoming the Medical Director for the Emergency Department.

In her current role as the Medical Director, her focus is on applying Lean principles to improve operational efficiency. She leads the department in performing continuous quality improvement projects to improve care, and collaborating with hospital and other service line leadership to get the right patients, the right care in the right setting. She also leads a multi-disciplinary team in developing comprehensive care plans to best care for ED super utilizers.

Congratulations Dr. McCullough!