Specialties & Experience

General Specialties: Hospitalist

Specialty Focus: Hospitalist, sepsis, pulmonary embolism, stroke, myocardial infarction, cancer, congestive heart failure, pneumonia, gastrointestinal bleeding, kidney failure, cirrhosis, patient handoffs, hospitalist co-management, hospital transitions of care

Education: B.A. Political Science, Duke University; M.D., University of Chicago; Internal Medicine, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

Years in Practice: 15

Additional Information

After medical school at the University of Chicago and residency training at UNC-Chapel Hill, I have spent 15 years in real-life hospitalist practice, at hospitals ranging from 50 to 400 beds, in multiple different localities, regions, and employment models. I was Medical Director of a major regional hospitalist group for 8 years, growing a small, low-census team into a large, operationally sophisticated program of 40 doctors and NP's. In addition to my clinical practice, I managed the group through the challenges that face hospitalists everywhere: - Increasing physician workload and staffing/scheduling pressures - Increasing scale and widening scope of practice - Patient handoffs and shift-to-shift continuity of care - Multidisciplinary communication and integration of input from multiple specialists - Collaboration and supervision of NP's and PA's - Hospital resource utilization, length-of-stay, and ED throughput pressures - Efficient and responsible use of EMR's and CPOE platforms These key elements of the complexity of hospital care are very frequently at the root of medical malpractice litigation involving hospitalists. Having returned to full-time clinical practice, I continue to navigate an increasingly complex acute care landscape, where hospitalists make tough decisions every day. Hospitalists must not only manage highly complex patient care, but they are also asked by healthcare organizations to implement numerous system-level policies and mandates, not all of which are completely reconcilable. I know from the inside how hospital care can go wrong despite the best of intentions, and just as important, how hospitalist care can be perceived as substandard even when the reality is demonstrably the opposite. As a litigation consultant, I enjoy bringing all my knowledge and experience to the task of clarifying my world for those on the outside of it.