FEATURE

Thomas B. Higgins MD, MBA, Chief of Critical Care Medicine Division, Awarded 2009 Weinberg Family Prize

Dr. Thomas Higgins received the Weinberg Family Prize, Baystate Health's highest academic honor, for his distinguished career as a clinician, educator, clinical investigator and medical leader.

Dr. Higgins considers the award to be quite an honor, saying it is wonderful to be included among the group of previous winners, all of whom have done so much to advance Baystate nationally and worldwide. He says his motivation comes from a love of teaching and research. “You need a spirit of inquiry. You have to love to teach and work with medical students, residents and fellows and help develop their careers. At a certain point, building your own CV is not as important as mentoring junior staff. And, it makes you more productive if you mentor others along the way.” 

Dr. Higgins joined Baystate Medical Center in 1996 as Chief of Critical Care Division. Accomplishments of the division under his leadership include receiving the Beacon Award for Excellence in Critical Care Nursing for the last 5 years, the initiation of the Critical Care Anesthesia and Critical Care Medicine fellowships, and Baystate’s leadership role in the ARDS research network.

Higgins is best known for his work on the Mortality Probability Model which was originally developed by Dan Teres who was his predecessor as Chief. Higgins developed his own model for cardiac surgery patients after doing research at the Cleveland Clinic on the first generation of cardiac surgery patients who were then entering their 70s and 80s.

Last year Dr. Higgins became the co-medical director of Medical Informatics, taking over from Dr. Peter Lindenauer. He explains that informatics is a young field that provides an opportunity for research at the interface of clinical medicine and technology that can provide an opportunity for cost savings while making life easier for nurses and doctors by using computers to make low-level decisions.

Later this month, Higgins will present a paper at the American Medical Informatics Association in San Francisco on patient safety and how informatics has helped reduce the number of pharmacy errors. The research involved scanning barcodes on both patient bracelets and drug labels to ensure that patients receive the correct drug at the proper time.

Ultimately, he feels his most important contribution is excellent patient care, because everything flows from there. He likens it to a “3-legged stool – patient care, research and education. As you care for patients and make observations, you collect data that you can use to teach others. Then the next generation comes along and advances things.”

Weinberg Family Prize Has Recognized Outstanding Academic Achievement Since 1997

This prize, created through the generosity of Dr. Ethel Weinberg and her husband, Saul Weinberg, is awarded annually to a faculty member whose innovative research, publications, or leadership of a national academic organization have brought honor to Baystate Health.