Becker’s Healthcare Podcast Driving Collaboration and Quality Across Cardiovascular Care in Michigan with Dr. Vikram Kashyap
Mar 7, 2026
Dr. Vikram Kashyap, vascular surgeon and cardiovascular executive leading a major Heart and Vascular Institute, discusses uniting cardiology, surgery and vascular care across a health system. He covers systemwide efforts to review and reduce mortality, practical teamwork and documentation changes that improved outcomes, anesthesia workforce shifts and the move to integrate pulmonology for stronger clinical and research collaboration.
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Systemwide Mortality Reviews Lowered Mortality
- System-level review of every cardiovascular mortality can drive measurable improvement in outcomes.
- Corwell analyzed each death, socialized lessons across cardiology, surgery, and vascular teams, cutting raw mortality and O/E ratio to 0.67.
Better Documentation Improved Outcome Metrics
- Improving documentation of patient risk raised expected mortality, improving observed-to-expected performance metrics.
- Corwell combined better risk documentation with careful patient selection to reduce raw 30-day mortality across specialties.
Shift To Employed Anesthesia Created Major Change
- Corwell shifted from contracted private anesthesia groups to an employed model, creating significant change management needs.
- The move required intensive recruiting, cultural alignment in OR teams, and using locums while building an employed department.