Kathleen Sarmiento MD, MPH

Kathleen Sarmiento is a Professor of Medicine at the VA San Francisco Health Care System and the Executive Director for VHA's National Sleep Medicine Program Office. Her research focuses on improving access to sleep care for both rural and urban Veterans by leveraging telehealth and hub-spoke partnerships, and by de-implementing low-value visits. Her current grant will assess the value of home sleep apnea testing in a broad range of comorbidities and pre-test risk for OSA, as well as study the impact of initial consultation before sleep testing on adherence to therapy, patient satisfaction, and patient outcomes. Through the national implementation of the VA’s TeleSleep Program, a variety of synchronous and asynchronous modalities to improve access, quality, and timeliness of care are evaluated. Dr. Sarmiento is also engaged in clinical research evaluating virtual care for sleep disorder evaluation and management, hospital-to-home transitions, and the benefit of non-invasive ventilation on morbidity and mortality in patients with chronic respiratory failure. She is an innovator and early adopter of technology, seeking to incorporate AI and machine learning into care delivery models to improve practice efficiency and patient outcomes.