MD MSHS
Dr Karl Lorenz is a general practitioner and palliative care physician. He has served as a clinician, educator, and researcher in palliative care for the past three decades, starting his academic career in Los Angeles, where he was at UCLA, the VA Greater Los Angeles, and the RAND Corporation. Since 2015, he has been a Professor at Stanford University, where he served as Chief and Research Chief for the Section of Palliative Care in the Division of Primary Care and Population Health. He is an investigator with the Center for Innovation to Implementation (Ci2i) at the Veterans Administration Palo Alto. He was selected as a Packer Health Policy fellow with Cancer Australia and lived in Canberra 2007-2008. Since 2010, he has been part of the United States Department of Veterans Affairs palliative care national leadership team and the founder and current Co-Director of the VA Palliative Care Quality Improvement Resource Center (QuIRC). QuIRC helps direct policy and practice for nearly 150 palliative care programs througout VA’s extensive clinical networks throughout the United States, serving nearly 10 million Veterans. His research encompasses evidence synthesis, quality measure development, pain and symptom management, implementation science, global palliative care, and quality improvement (QI). Karl, Michelle De-Natale, and Jake Mickelson developed and fostered the PC-PAICE program which included Australian faculty as QI mentors and evolved into the EQuIP Center on the Indian National Cancer Grid. PC-PAICE and EQuIP have supported QI in oncology and palliative care at around 100 leading clinical and academic health centers in India, and the team has collaborated with Dr Meera Agar’s team at the University of Technology Sydney in the SPHERE-Stanford QI Program to bring QI to New South Wales palliative care teams. Dr Lorenz is passionate about outdoor activities, performing and enjoying music, and reading and writing poetry and prose.
