Karl Y. Bilimoria MD, MS

Dr. Karl Y. Bilimoria is a surgical oncologist, researcher, and physician executive at Indiana University. He is the Chair of the Department of Surgery and the Jay L. Grosfeld Professor of Surgery (tenured). He is also the Vice President for Surgical Quality for the Indiana University Health system. His clinical practice is focused on melanoma, sarcoma, and gastrointestinal stromal tumors. He is a native Hoosier and a graduate of the Indiana University School of Medicine.

Dr. Bilimoria is a health services, quality improvement, health policy, and medical education researcher. He is the founding Executive Director of the Surgical Outcomes and Quality Improvement Center (SOQIC) at Indiana University, a nationally recognized research team focused on national, regional, and local quality improvement research and implementation, as well as surgical education. SOQIC was recently located at Indiana University from Northwestern.

Dr. Bilimoria also founded the 56-hospital Illinois Surgical Quality Improvement Collaborative (ISQIC), which is now being merged with Indiana hospitals to become the Iliana Surgical Quality Improvement Collaborative. He also developed a novel platform for innovative surgical education trials as the Principal Investigator of the 151-hospital FIRST Trial and the co-PI of the subsequent 215-hospital SECOND Trial. The SECOND Trial and this surgical education trials platform were also recently relocated to Indiana University. 

Dr. Bilimoria is a Faculty Scholar at the American College of Surgeons. He has published more than 450 scientific articles, including numerous publications in JAMA and the New England Journal of Medicine (h-index=71). Dr. Bilimoria’s research is funded by the NIH, AHRQ, and numerous others totaling >$35M.

He is the past President of the Association for Academic Surgery and the Surgical Outcomes Club, and he has been a part of the leadership for several other national organizations in surgery and oncology. Dr. Bilimoria has mentored more than 50 surgical research fellows and junior faculty. He was awarded Mentor of the Year by Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine in 2020 and has been listed by Becker as one of the “Top 50 Experts Leading the Field of Patient Safety” in the U.S.  

Dr. Bilimoria previously had a variety of executive leadership roles for the Northwestern Medicine 11-hospital health system in Chicago, particularly focusing on quality and innovation. Dr. Bilimoria lives in Indianapolis with his amazing wife and three children.