Massachusetts General Hospital

Biography

Dr. Theodore I. Benzer, an attending physician at Massachusetts General Hospital Emergency Department, graduated from Yale University School of Medicine after receiving his PhD in chemistry and biology from the California Institute of Technology. He completed his residency in internal medicine at Boston City Hospital.

In addition to his role as attending physician, Dr. Benzer is an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard University. He is an active member of the ED Executive Committee, the ED Operations Committee, and the ED Quality and Safety Committee which are ongoing committees that develop, direct and assess all the clinical care in the ED.

Since 2008, Dr. Benzer has been a member of the MGH Quality and Patient Safety Committee and Co-Chair of the MGH ED Quality and Safety Committee. He has been a critical member of multiple committees within the ED and hospital wide.

On a daily basis, Dr. Benzer works with medical students and residents assigned to the emergency department focusing on appropriate evaluation and treatment of the ED patients. He is also the supervising physician of the Nurse Practitioners in the emergency department. Serving in this position, Dr. Benzer helped create the Nurse Practitioner model of care for the ED Observation Unit. He is in charge of the assessment of their clinical care and ongoing education.

Research
Dr. Benzer's research has included work on the clinical assessment of pneumonia and the criteria for discharge from the emergency department. He has worked with point of care testing in the emergency department in an attempt to streamline care and decrease length of stay. He has been involved in a stroke study evaluating the reliability of the emergency department MD's assessment of an acute stroke patient in communication with the acute stroke team. Dr. Benzer has begun to collaborate with Dr. Jay Schuur of Brigham and Women's Hospital Emergency Department on a qualitative research study about methods for decreasing blood stream infection rate in patients with a central venous line.  Recently, he has begun collaborative research with Dr. Hannah Wong of York University in Toronto examining the individual variation of imaging utilization amongst emergency physicians. This line of research may lead to strategies for insuring appropriate use of advanced imaging in the emergency department.

Publications

View my most recent publications at PubMed