Vivian Lee, MD

Vivian Lee, MD, is a board-certified pediatric hospitalist at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) and Clinical Associate Professor of Pediatrics (Clinician Educator) at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC).  She is the Co-Director of Quality Improvement (QI) and Patient Safety for the Division of Hospital Medicine and provides oversight of division safety event review and improvement efforts.

Dr. Lee’s passion is in the promotion of high value, cost- and harm-conscious care to provide evidence-based, patient-centered, and quality care to hospitalized children.   Her research efforts have focused on areas that impact clinical decision-making to support “safely doing less,” particularly for patients hospitalized with common diagnoses such as the young infant with fever, bronchiolitis, and urinary tract infections.  She has led and participated in numerous institutional projects and national quality/value improvement collaboratives.  At CHLA she serves on the Department of Pediatrics Performance Improvement and the Multidisciplinary Action Plan committees, the latter which develops and monitors adherence to evidence-based guidelines.  She is a core faculty member of the Pediatric Hospital Medicine fellowship, co-leads the QI core curriculum for CHLA subspecialty fellows, and is involved in QI and high value care education for residents. 

Nationally, Dr. Lee is a member of the Benchmarking Advisory Committee for the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Value In Inpatient Pediatrics (VIP) Network and a founding member of the High Value Practice Academic Alliance (HVPAA) pediatric subcommittee.  She serves as a Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM) representative for the Pediatric Hospital Medicine (PHM) Choosing Wisely® panel, who in 2020 identified five new evidence-based recommendations for opportunities to improve healthcare value in hospitalized children. 

Dr. Lee grew up in San Diego, CA and received her undergraduate degree from The University of Chicago and medical degree from University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.  She completed her pediatrics residency at Miami (now Nicklaus) Children’s Hospital before returning to California to become CHLA’s inaugural Pediatric Hospital Medicine fellow in 2010, where she has since stayed as faculty.