Chien-Huan Chen, MD, PhD

2023 Dean’s Impact Award Recipient

Chien-Huan Chen, MD, PhD, is being honored for his selfless service and dedication to maintaining an exceptional level of quality and safety for gastroenterology services during the pandemic. Chen is the chief of the Section of General Gastroenterology and oversees both inpatient and outpatient activities, within clinics and in the endoscopy lab. His area of expertise is obscure gastrointestinal bleeding, an area which saw a surge in cases during the COVID-19 pandemic. Chen assumed oversight responsibility for multiple aspects of patient safety and quality efforts not only in the Division of Gastroenterology but also the Department of Medicine. He is a lead member of the GI Endoscopy Clinical Expert Council of the Center for Clinical Excellence within BJC HealthCare and played a key role in establishing best practices for inpatient gastroenterology patient management during COVID-19. He created policies to triage endoscopic procedures under extraordinarily challenging conditions with staff shortages. He also adapted our endoscopy labs and clinics to ensure staff and patient safety and maintain workflow. He established approaches that allowed the clinic to ramp up or down to accommodate COVID-19 surges and to pivot to telemedicine. He also led efforts to ensure proper personal protective equipment (PPE) usage in all areas and to optimize pre-procedure COVID-19 testing. He worked collaboratively with fellowship program leaders to adjust the inpatient consult services to allow fellow participation in the clinic and busy general medicine inpatient services.