A Message from Kord Honda, MD
Welcome to the Department of Dermatology. The Department has an unwavering commitment to the most compassionate, highest quality of care of our patients, advancing knowledge in dermatology, and training the next generation of physicians and leaders. Our faculty and staff collaborate to establish numerous outstanding programs that promote skin health, whether in one of our hospitals or our many outpatient clinics that span Northeast Ohio. We do this by:
Optimizing Skin Health across Northeast Ohio and beyond:
We discover and disseminate the best ways to take care of people’s skin.
We offer cutting edge trials for challenging diseases through our Clinical Trials Unit.
Our services span pediatric dermatology, complex medical dermatology, cutaneous lymphoma, skin cancer surgery, immunobullous diseases, and dermatopathology.
Educating the spectrum of learners:
Our faculty train dermatology, pediatrics, and medicine residents, medical students, nurse practitioners & PhDs.
To Heal
We see patients at 11 geographically dispersed sites designed to provide access across the University Hospitals (UH) Health System. With more than 50,000 visits annually, 4,000 Mohs surgeries, 20,000 dermatopathology cases and excellent patient satisfaction scores, we emphasize team-based care so that our patients have many options for care and communication. Through the multidisciplinary Vascular Anomalies Clinic, we treat patients with rare, often deforming tumors. Our Mohs surgeons handle the most complex cases in the region, including frozen section Mohs for melanoma. Our growing dermatopathology service is highly respected for turnaround and top quality. Dermatopathology integrates closely with our Multi-Disciplinary Cutaneous Oncology Program for patients with melanoma, lymphoma, and other skin cancers, with over 2,000 patients reviewed every year. Our lab services also include immunofluorescence testing for autoimmune diseases and the Center for Medical Mycology for diagnosing fungal diseases. We offer cutting edge treatments through our clinical trials unit. In the process, our providers have earned strong reputations in both general and subspecialty dermatology, boasting thirteen Cleveland Magazine’s Top Doctors in 2026. Many of our providers are leaders in national and international dermatology organizations. We appreciate that our community supports us and we invest in our community through several free skin cancer screenings, and our free dermatology clinic.
To Teach
Education is a cornerstone of our practice and occurs throughout the entire spectrum of our clinical and research activities. We teach in inpatient and outpatient UH settings as well as at the VA Medical Center and Case Western Reserve University. The department offers a preeminent ACGME-sponsored dermatology residency with optional tracks in academic research or osteopathic medicine, a nurse practitioner post-master's training program, a post-internship clinical trials training program, and an accredited Mohs fellowship. Medical students from across the country, including Case Western Reserve and NEOMED are offered clinical rotations and mentored research opportunities which can be ongoing. We are highly successful in the placement of Case Western Reserve University medical students into top national dermatology residencies and our residents into highly competitive fellowships. Our faculty organize regional educational conferences and frequently present invited lectures nationally and internationally.
To Discover
We emphasize our commitment to research and training in research. Our research revenue stream splits between NIH and other federal awards, foundation awards, clinical research contracts, clinical central reference lab contracts, and translational research contracts. Spanning basic lab research, clinical lab research, translational research, epidemiology/outcomes research, and clinical trials, we discover new ways of understanding and treating skin disease. While our publication record is extensive, we cherish mentoring the next generation of discoverers without whom we would not be able to make our next discovery.