Psychiatric Expert Witness

Specialties & Experience of this Expert Witness

Additional Information

Medical Director of intensive outpatient program. Managing patient population from the age of 13 and older, including a subset of geriatric and perinatal patients. Cases include deprescribing in appropriate patient populations, in particular gradual taper off long-term benzodiazepine use. Also working as an on-call Consult & Liaison psychiatrist for medically admitted patients with a significant percentages of geriatric cases, difficult to place psychosocially complex cases and emergency psychiatry cases seen both in the emergency department and in the crisis response center. With a prior history of working for several years in a methadone maintenance clinic in the outpatient psychiatry department with experience managing MMT patients and a significant portion of focus on minimizing risk of psychotropic abuse. Specialty certifications include American Board of Adolescent Psychiatry with extensive clinical experience working with adolescents in clinical practice, as well as Perinatal Mental Health Professional with experience working with the perinatal population. EDUCATION: Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science, Philadelphia, PA 19125 07/2015-07/2019 ● Resident in Training, General Psychiatry Drexel University College of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA 08/2011-06/2015 ● Doctor of Medicine (MD) CUNY Hunter College, New York, NY 08/2006- 05/2010 ● B.A. in German Language and Literature and English Creative Writing ● Graduated Summa Cum Laude WORK: Hope Springs Behavioral Health, Warminster, PA 18974 07/2020-present ● Medical Director of intensive outpatient program. ● Medication management for intensive outpatient population, as well as working closely with Clinical Director and counselors to ensure appropriate treatment is provided. Periodic chart checking to ensure proper documentation by the counselors as well as chart checking of other staff psychiatrist to ensure that appropriate treatment protocols are being followed. ● Deprescribing in appropriate patient population, in particular gradual taper off long-term benzodiazepine use. ● Managing patient population from the age of 13 and older, including a subset of geriatric and perinatal patients. ● Educating patients on medication side effects and interactions, in particular for those already on psychotropics, many of whom are unaware of the risks associated with their medication. ● Managing potentially violent patients – this includes identifying risk factors, de-escalating when needed, monitoring for Tarasoff duty-to-warn scenarios, and educating therapists on management and documentation. Doylestown Hospital, Doylestown, PA 18901 07/2019-present ● On-call Consult & Liaison psychiatry for medically admitted patients. ● Significant percentage of consults are in the geriatric population with frequent need to manage various forms of delirium, as well as significant need for deprescribing and psychotropic consolidation. Consults also cover wide breadth of other presentations, most of whom are medically complex and in need of psychotropic management. This includes initiating psychotropics, deprescribing psychotropics and/or ruling out psychiatric processes as contributing to presentation. ● Also manage involuntary admissions that present to the Emergency Department and to the Crisis Center. Merakey, Philadelphia PA 19131 02/2020-04/2023 ● Outpatient medication management for patients engaged in the methadone maintenance program. ● Coordinated care with individual therapists in order to ensure that psychosocial needs were being addressed. A portion of medication management was focused on deprescribing, as well as ensuring that psychotropics did not significantly interact with methadone use. Significant focus involved minimizing psychotropic abuse potential as well.