(November 2012) Eric Coleman, MD, a geriatrician at the University of Colorado School of Medicine whose work focuses on helping patients transition from hospital to home, has won a $500,000 MacArthur Foundation “genius” fellowship. 

A CU professor who practices at University of Colorado Hospital, he focuses on an area of health care that has been embraced nationally as part of health care reform—reducing the number of patients released from a hospital only to be readmitted.

Those readmissions are costly, increasingly likely to be penalized by Medicare and, for the most part, preventable. Through studies piloted in Denver, then exported to other cities, Coleman showed that coaching patients in the transition out of a hospital, and then following up, helped keep them from having to return quickly.

His approach, using practical information such as lists of medical warning signs and follow-up appointments, is called Care Transitions Intervention.