Faculty spotlight: Thomas Payne
Dr. Thomas Payne attended Stanford University for his undergraduate degree and graduated from the University of Washington School of Medicine. He completed his internal medicine residency at the University of Colorado Affiliated Hospitals in Denver, Colorado, after which he served as a staff physician at Denver General Hospital.
Following a research fellowship in medical information science at Massachusetts General Hospital, he joined the University of Washington in 1991 as an affiliate assistant professor in the Department of Health Services in the School of Public Health.
Payne continued to pursue research opportunities in clinical computing and informatics, developing expertise in clinical tracking systems, ambulatory care computing systems, development of clinical vocabularies, and continuous quality improvement programs in ambulatory care.
He joined the Department of Medicine in 1997, serving as Associate Chief Medical Officer for Clinical Information Management at the VA Puget Sound Health Care System. At the VA, he led the installation of the Computerized Patient Records System (CPRS) computer-based medical record system for inpatient and outpatient providers, earning the VA Puget Sound the 2000 Nicholas E. Davies CPR Recognition Award of Excellence from CPRI-HOST.
He became the medical director for UW Medicine Information Technology Services in 2000, serving in this capacity for over 20 years. In this capacity, he has dedicated his career around improving the use and evaluation of computer-based medical records in patient care, clinical research, and quality improvement with particular focus on electronic documentation, computerized practitioner order entry, and natural language processing.
Notable research projects have included utilizing electronic health record (EHR) data on risk factors to prevent breast and ovarian cancer, and his trailblazing work on OpenNotes has helped to improve health outcomes through transparency. He has also explored ways to write better and more accurate clinical notes and apply natural language processing tools to the content of notes. He held a joint appointment in the Department of Biomedical Informatics and Medical Education.
He became board certified in clinical informatics in 2013, the first time the board exam was given for this subspecialty, and is recognized internationally for his work in informatics. Among many national honors and leadership roles, Payne is on the Editorial Board of the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, is a fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics and the American College of Physicians and has served as board chair of the American Medical Informatics Association, where he received two leadership awards.
Payne was also the inaugural recipient of the UWMC Chief of Medicine Service Award in 2012, recognizing Department of Medicine faculty who have significantly contributed to the clinical and scholarly missions of the UWMC.
“Tom has done outstanding work over the years to improve our electronic health records and utilize information technology to increase workflow, reduce burdens, and create transparency in the EHR for both patients and providers,” said Department Chair Dr. Barbara Jung.
“I thank him for his 30+ years of service and wish him all the best in his future endeavors.”