Aytekin Oto, MD, has accepted an expanded role as Chief Physician of the University of Chicago Medicine Physicians, Dean for Clinical Affairs at the University of Chicago, and head of the Faculty Practice Plan.
Dr. Oto will continue to work closely with Mark Anderson, MD, PhD, Dean of the Biological Sciences Division and Pritzker School of Medicine and Executive Vice President for Medical Affairs, and UChicago Health System President Tom Jackiewicz, in addition to clinical department chairs, faculty, and senior leadership to enhance the role of the physician enterprise and support physician practices in critical areas that include strategic planning and partnership development. Dr. Oto’s work is part of broader efforts to expand the health system and provide the highest quality patient care while supporting education and research missions.
As he begins this new role, Dr. Oto will also step down as Chair of the Department of Radiology, a position he has held since January 2020, after serving as interim chair since 2019. During his tenure, Dr. Oto introduced several important innovations to design enterprise level governance for imaging, improve clinical operations in the department, and increase patient access to advanced imaging techniques. These efforts led to a 47% increase in imaging volumes and 35% increase in clinical faculty between FY18 and FY23. Under his leadership, the radiology department opened its first advanced imaging center in River East and the Dialysis Access Center. The department’s federal research expenditures have grown by 30% during his tenure, improving its NIH rankings over the past four years.
Dr. Oto has been a distinguished faculty member since 2007 and has conducted research funded by the NIH on detection and imaging-guided therapy for prostate cancer using MRI. He received the Distinguished Investigator Award from the Academy for Radiology and Biomedical Imaging Research and has been elected as a fellow at the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering for his innovative contributions to biomedical imaging research.
We will share more details about plans for interim leadership of the Department of Radiology and the search for a new chair at a later time.
