Patrick J. O’Connor, MD, MPH

Senior Clinical Investigator

Research Interests

Since 1993 Dr. O’Connor has been Senior Investigator for HealthPartners Research Foundation and a practicing family physician in HealthPartners Medical Group. His career research interest is in chronic disease care improvement with emphasis on type 2 diabetes, hypertension in adults and children, heart disease, depression, and related conditions. Prior to coming to HealthPartners, he attended Boston College (Chemistry and Theology), Case Western Reserve (MD), and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and completed my residency training at Duke. Thus, it is not surprising that he is an avid college basketball fan.

Just after completing his family medicine residency training at Duke, he found himself in a remote rural clinic on the Navajo Reservation, where some of the 50 patients he saw each day arrived on horseback. The clinic had no electricity or phone, and he needed his translator Dan (who was a Navajo “Code Talker” in World War II) for nearly all visits. Dan pointed out which of the patients were Navajo medicine men, and Dr. O’Connor tried to learn a few things from them. Although he was quite happy with this arrangement, there were no lab tests (other than urine dipsticks) and it was a challenge to take care of his 25 patients with diabetes. The doctors he worked with at the hospital clinic suggested that he shouldn’t take care of diabetes patients in such a primitive setting. His first research project was a study of whether his 25 diabetes patients did worse than the 600 diabetes patients at the hospital clinic. If they did worse, he would stop providing diabetes care at the remote clinic.

The results showed no difference in quality of care at the two clinics. He stayed at the clinic, and the paper reporting the findings was his first publication and won an award from the U.S. Public Health Service, presented by Dr. C. Everett Koop. Dr. O’Connor says, “However, to tell the truth, it was clear that diabetes care at both clinics was absolutely terrible. In the subsequent 30 plus years, I have devoted my research career to finding ways to improve diabetes care wherever I have worked.”

After 8 years as an Assistant and Associate Professor at the University of Connecticut (think basketball), he arrived at HealthPartners and found many primary care colleagues, clinic staff, and visionary health plan and medical group leaders who were excited about improving diabetes care. Thus began a long series of research projects to develop and test new ideas, and this wonderful partnership of clinic staff, practitioners, and researchers has led to dramatic improvement in diabetes care at HealthPartners.

Specific accomplishments in diabetes patients since 1995 include a 50% drop in cardiovascular risk, a 50% drop in end stage renal disease, and less retinopathy and blindness. The amputation rate dropped from 11 per 1000 diabetes patients per year, to less than 4 per 1000 diabetes patients per year. HealthPartners has contributed 300 patients and considerable resources to the NIH-funded ACCORD Trial, led locally by Drs. JoAnn Sperl-Hillen and Karen Margolis with support from Dr. O’Connor—and the results of this trial have already revolutionized type 2 diabetes care moving forward.

HealthPartners members now enjoy relatively good diabetes care, and new information systems and care models are being developed at HealthPartners to more efficiently extending what has been learned about diabetes care to improve care for other common chronic diseases like hypertension, high cholesterol, depression, kidney disease and heart disease. The past is prologue, and our community has seen the benefits, and will continue to benefit, from the ongoing efforts of HealthPartners leaders, physicians, and staff in the never-ending quest for better health for our members, patients, and the community.

These research and improvement efforts have been generously supported by approximately $25 million in funding from National Institutes of Health, Agency of Healthcare Research and Quality, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and private foundations. Dr. O’Connor is currently Principal Investigator of a number of research projects, including the $2.5 million Personalized Physician Learning Intervention to Improve Hypertension Care (PPL) which delivers web-based interventions to physicians treating hypertension, the $2.6 million Reducing Clinical Inertia in Diabetes Care, a randomized trial designed to decrease clinical inertia of patients with uncontrolled hypertension, and a new $3.6 million NHLBI grant that focuses on analysis of patterns of blood pressure and weight in children and adolescents over a multiyear period. He gives about 30 talks a year at regional, national, and international meetings, frequently reviews papers and grants for journals and NIH institutes, helps younger investigators hone their research skills, and tries to get home on time each day. His avocations include poetry reading and writing, bicycle riding, travel, the care and feeding of tempestuous teenagers, and an interest in spirituality and health.

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