Dermatology & Skin Cancer Center

As the University Hospitals Department of Dermatology, we have a unique duty to unrelentingly work for the benefit of present and future patients with conditions and cancers of the skin. This requires a long-term commitment by each member of the department to engage in a cohesive team effort at building outstanding programs. Our goals are to:

• Optimize skin health
  • Integrate the art and science of caring for patients
• Generate exciting new concepts for therapy
  • Advanced research in the skin sciences
• Bring these to our patients
  • Patient care services across the full spectrum of dermatology and skin health
• Educate providers in their use
• Teaching programs for practitioners, residents, medical students, nurse practitioners and PhDs

To Heal:
We see patients at 11 geographically dispersed sites designed to provide access across the University Hospital health system. With more than 50,000 visits annually, and excellent patient satisfaction scores, we emphasize team-based care so that our patients have many options for care and communication. Our providers have earned strong reputations in both general and subspecialty dermatology, boasting six Top Doctors and seven Super Doctors, and many of our providers are leaders in dermatology organizations. Our growing dermatopathology service is highly respected for turnaround and top quality. Dermatopathology integrates closely with our Multidisciplinary Cutaneous Oncology Program for patients with melanoma, lymphoma and other skin cancers. Our lab services also include immunofluorescence testing for autoimmune diseases and the Center for Medical Mycology for diagnosing fungal diseases.

Appointments and referrals can be made via calls to Central Scheduling or online.

To Teach:
Education occurs throughout the entire spectrum of our clinical and research activities. We teach in our UH settings as well as at the VA Medical Center and Case Western Reserve University. The department offers a large ACGME-sponsored dermatology residency with optional tracks for Academic Career Development or Osteopathic Medicine, an ACGME sponsored Micrographic Surgery and Cutaneous Oncology Fellowship, a Nurse Practitioner post-Masters training program, and a PhD training program in cutaneous biology research. Medical students are offered clinical rotations, mentored research opportunities which can be ongoing, or supported by three-month or one-year full-time fellowships through our NIH Training Grant. We are quite successful in placement of medical students into top national dermatology residencies. The department is also committed to enabling continuing education through a program designed to enable pursuit of management skills for faculty and administrative staff.

To Discover:
Our department is one of the top centers of excellence worldwide in skin research and in bringing state-of-the-art findings to help patients with skin diseases. The department’s efforts span basic functioning of the skin, mechanisms of skin disease, and clinical trials of new therapies. Support for research comes from National Institutes of Health (NIH)/other federal awards, clinical research contracts, clinical central reference lab contracts, and translational research contracts (human subject intervention plus mechanism of action lab-based studies).Spanning basic lab research, clinical lab research, translational research, epidemiology/outcomes research, and clinical trials, we are routinely ranked in the top 10 in NIH awards nationwide for over 20 years, and are the site of the only NIH Center of Research Translation for Psoriasis in the country.

Community Service

We participate in many community service activities. The department sponsors an employee mole check day in conjunction with the national skin cancer prevention and detection month, as well as joining other dermatologists and residents in the annual citywide skin cancer screening coordinated by the American Academy of Dermatology and the Cleveland Dermatological Society. Special monthly and weekly conferences are coordinated in which we work with community physicians to discuss diagnosis and management of difficult cases. The Department provides dermatologic services to a Neighborhood Health Center in an underserved urban area.