Sandra F. Simmons, Ph.D.
Sandra F. Simmons, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Division of Geriatrics within the Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. She is the Hamilton Chair in Geriatrics and Aging Research and holds a secondary appointment as a faculty member in the Department of Psychology at Vanderbilt University. Dr. Simmons’ background and training is in clinical psychology and gerontology. She serves as the Director of the Vanderbilt Center for Quality Aging and Deputy Associate Director for Research at the Geriatric Research, Education and Clinical Center (GRECC), Tennessee Valley Healthcare System Veterans Administration. She is also a Senior Scholar for the Nashville VA Quality Scholars Program. Dr. Simmons has been the recipient of numerous grants to examine issues in gerontology from the National Institutes of Health and Aging, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Veterans Healthcare Administration and the National Alzheimer’s Association. Her research is focused on clinical interventions to improve quality of care and quality of life for older adults across the continuum of care to include acute care, post-acute care, long-term care and dementia care within assisted living. She has conducted research to evaluate and improve long-term care quality and has published extensively on the validity of nursing home quality indicator metrics, the relationship between staffing and quality, and strategies to translate efficacious interventions into nursing home care practice through quality improvement and implementation science. Her current research examines interventions to reduce polypharmacy and improve geriatric syndromes among hospitalized older adults transitioning to post-acute care in both community and veteran facilities through a patient-centered deprescribing intervention to reduce overall medication burden. She’s also leading a separate study to apply discrete event simulation modeling to determine staffing needs for hospitalized older patients to enhance mobility and reduce fall risk during hospitalization.
Sandra F. Simmons, PhD, is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Geriatrics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and she is the Hamilton Chair in Geriatrics and Aging Research. She also holds a secondary appointment as a faculty member in the Department of Psychology at Vanderbilt University. Her background and training is in clinical psychology and gerontology. She serves as the Director of the Vanderbilt Center for Quality Aging (www.vumc.org/cqa/home) and is a faculty member of the the Geriatric Research, Education and Clinical Center (GRECC), Tennessee Valley Healthcare System Veterans Administration. She is also a Senior Scholar for the Nashville VA Quality Scholars Program, which trains physicians, nurses and clinical psychologists in quality improvement and implementation science.
Dr. Simmons has been the recipient of numerous grants to examine issues in gerontology from the National Institutes of Health and Aging, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Veterans Healthcare Administration, and the National Alzheimer’s Association. Specifically, her research foci include clinical and behavioral interventions to improve quality of care and quality of life for older adults across the continuum of care to include acute care, post-acute care, long-term care and dementia care within assisted living. She has conducted research to evaluate and improve long-term care quality and has published extensively on the validity of nursing home quality metrics, the relationship between staffing and quality, and strategies to translate efficacious interventions into nursing home care practice through quality improvement and implementation science. Her recent research has examined interventions to reduce polypharmacy among hospitalized older adults transitioning to post-acute care in both community and Veteran facilities through a patient-centered deprescribing intervention to reduce overall medication burden. She’s also currently leading a separate study to apply simulation modeling to determine staffing needs for hospitalized older patients to enhance mobility and reduce fall risk during hospitalization. A new healthcare transformation award from the Tennessee Department of Health will support the expansion of simulation modeling to inform optimal licensed and unlicensed staffing needs in the acute care setting and evaluate strategies to incorporate routine screening for social drivers of health to improve post-discharge patient outcomes. In addition to these studies, the CQA team has recently conducted program evaluation for the Tennessee Commission on Aging & Disability and the Middle Tennessee Geriatric Workforce Enhancement Program community-based programs and projects.