Bio

Chris Thomas is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine at LSU Health Sciences Center (LSUHSC) in Baton Rouge.  Dr. Thomas graduated magna cum laude from John Carroll University with a Bachelor of Science and a concentration in Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry. He subsequently attended the Ohio State University College of Medicine and Public Health, and completed his Internal Medicine residency and fellowship in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Prior to joining the clinical faculty, he was the co-director of critical care for Anesthesia Medical Group in Nashville, TN where he was responsible for implementation of evidence based quality initiatives in a 60 bed quaternary referral ICU.  

Dr. Thomas’ clinical activities include supervising the LSU Pulmonary and Critical Care services at Our Lady of the Lake (OLOL) Regional Medical Center and Baton Rouge General Hospital.  His career interests surround sustained reductions in unnecessary clinical variability, improving the time to translation of evidence-based research into clinical application, and the movement of quality metrics into alignment with patient-centered clinical themes.  He currently participates in both NIH-funded and industry-sponsored clinical trials as an investigator in collaboration with Dr. Hollis O'Neal.  His quality and research projects center on improved diagnostic accuracy of sepsis to facilitate best practice, evaluation of analgosedation and the ABCDEF bundle in the critically ill, reducing the harms of hospital mortality, and integration of health equity metrics into quality reporting with Dr. Tonya Jagneaux.  He has over 30 peer-reviewed publications including national and international abstracts.  

Dr. Thomas serves as the Medical Director for System Quality and Patient Safety for Franciscan Missionaries of our Lady Health System, and Chief of Quality and Patient Safety, Performance Improvement for OLOL Regional Medical Center.  He serves on the executive committee as moderator for the Catholic Health Association's Clinical Quality Affinity group.  Locally, Dr. Thomas is the lead clinical faculty for the Patient Safety/Quality Scholars track at OLOL with a focus on improved serious safety event reporting and culture.  He is part of the executive committee of the Center for Integrated Research, Quality, Leadership, anaLytics, and Equity, and is a member of Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Society.