Baptist Cardiac Surgery Welcomes Khan
LOUISVILLE Ahmad Khan, MD, cardiothoracic surgeon, recently joined Baptist Cardiac Surgery, a part of Baptist Health Medical Group. The practice also includes Samuel Pollock, Jr., MD, and Sebastian Pagni, MD.
Khan received his medical degree at New York Medical College in 1999. He completed a cardiothoracic surgery clinical fellowship at Wayne State University/Detroit Medical Center in Detroit, Mich. in 2005 and went on to complete a cardiothoracic surgery residency at SUNY in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he served as administrative chief cardiothoracic resident from July 2006 to June 2007.
Baptist Cardiac Surgery is located at 3900 Kresge Way, Suite 46, Louisville and also has an office in New Albany at 136 E. Cottom Ave.
Ali Earns Senior Fellow in Hospital Medicine Designation
DANVILLE Ephraim McDowell Health announces that Amjad Ali, MD, medical director of the Team Health hospitalist service at Ephraim McDowell Regional Medical Center, has earned distinction as a Senior Fellow in Hospital Medicine (SFHM) from the Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM). This is a very elite honor for Ali as it is the highest degree in Hospital Medicine and very few physicians practicing in Hospital Medicine earn status as a Senior Fellow.
The SFHM credential is a key component in professional development for hospitalists. To be designated as a Senior Fellow in Hospital Medicine, a hospitalist must:
Serve as a hospitalist for at least five years,
Be a member of SHM for at least five years, and
Demonstrate their dedication to quality and process improvement and commitment to organizational teamwork, leadership, and lifelong learning.
Williams Named UK Healthcare Chief Transformation and Learning Officer
LEXINGTON Dr. Mark V. Williams has been named chief transformation and learning officer (CTLO) for UK HealthCare as well as co-director of the newly created Office for Value and Innovation in Healthcare Delivery (OVIHD). He will co-direct OVIHD with Dr. Bernie Boulanger, chief medical officer, and foster innovative approaches to increasing the value of patient-centered care delivery.
By leveraging UK HealthCare’s growing information technology expertise and performance improvement efforts, Williams intends to collaborate with staff and leaders throughout UK HealthCare to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of care delivery through standardization across the health system. His office will also work to optimize care coordination, fostering a population health strategy to deliver the most effective patient-centered care in the most appropriate setting.
Working closely with co-director Boulanger, Williams will coordinate OVIHD efforts that use analytics to both evaluate implementation of evidence-based practices and foster applied health services research at UK HealthCare. The intent is to become a learning health system.
Williams is a nationally recognized leader in quality and patient safety with 25 years of experience leading clinical enterprises ranging from a medical emergency clinic with 65,000 visits per year to hospital medicine programs with 100-plus staff members. He has conducted seminal research in the fields of care transitions, hospital medicine, care delivery and health literacy.
Eichorn Recognized for Anesthesiology Article
LEXINGTON Dr. John H. Eichhorn, professor of anesthesiology and Provost’s Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, authored a paper earlier in his career titled, “Standards for Patient Monitoring During Anesthesia at Harvard Medical School,” which is named in the current issue of the prestigious journal, Anesthesia and Analgesia, as one of the top 20 most important articles in anesthesiology ever written.
The Anesthesia and Analgesia review of the most important articles cites papers dating back to 1846 when the use of ether was first demonstrated (No. 1 on the list). Eichhorn’s report of the work of a committee he chaired starting in the mid-1980s at Harvard was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. It describes the development and implementation of practice standards and protocols that ultimately changed the clinical behavior of an entire profession, and virtually eliminated intraoperative anesthesia catastrophes caused by human error.
The landmark paper was ranked No. 10 on the review list and, as that article indicates, was a real “game changer,” the impact of which persists today around the world. As a result of career-long efforts to improve patient safety and quality of care in anesthesia, in 2011 Eichhorn received the John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety and Quality Award for Individual Achievement from the National Quality Forum (NQF) and the Joint Commission, the highest recognition there is in healthcare safety and quality.
“It was an exciting time back then,” said Eichhorn. “Some serious lapses in anesthesia care had led to severe patient injuries, and my group was directed to find a remedy. The solution required changing behaviors while also greatly improving on human senses in the OR by using what were then brand-new sensitive electronic technologies to monitor patients under anesthesia.”
Hoven Elected First Woman Chair of WMA
Kentucky physician Dr. Ardis Hoven, immediate past president of the American Medical Association, was elected the new chair of the World Medical Association on April 16, 2015. She was elected at the WMA’s 200th Council meeting in Oslo, Norway and takes over immediately as the WMA’s first woman chair.
Hoven, who did her internship and residency at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, is an internal medicine and infectious disease specialist in Lexington, Kentucky, and is Professor of Medicine at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine. She was president of the American Medical Association in 2013 and had been a member of the AMA Board of Trustees since 2005, becoming its secretary and then chair. For the past few years she has been the chair of the AMA delegation to the World Medical Association.
Ephraim McDowell Health President/CEO Elected to AHA Regional Policy Board
DANVILLE Vicki A. Darnell, president and CEO, Ephraim McDowell Health, was elected to serve on the American Hospital Association (AHA) Regional Policy Board 3 and has begun her three-year term.
Regional Policy Board 3 represents six states including the District of Columbia, Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia. The Board meets three times a year to foster communication between the AHA, its members, and state hospital associations. They provide input on public policy issues considered by the Board of Trustees, serve as ad hoc policy development committees when appropriate, and identify needs unique to a region and assist in developing programs to meet those needs.
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POLLACK NAMED 2015 PUBLIC HEALTH HERO
LEXINGTON Kentucky Children’s Hospital pediatrician and child safety researcher Dr. Susan Pollack was recently honored as one of the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department’s 2015 Public Health Heroes. The award is given annually to individuals who have demonstrated their dedication to improving the health of Lexington residents.
Pollack has advocated for injury prevention and safety measures for children of all ages. Her areas of expertise include safe sleeping areas for infants, car seat safety, drowning and fire prevention, safe teen driving, and head protection for bicyclists, skateboarders and ATV riders.
She frequently assists with the Child Care Health Consultant Program, which promotes healthy child development in safe environments. Pollack is the coordinator of the Pediatric and Adolescent Injury Prevention Program at the Kentucky Injury and Prevention Research Center, and an assistant professor in the UK Department of Pediatrics and the UK Department of Preventive Medicine. She serves on the Child Fatality Review committee in Fayette County and on the state level through the Department for Public Health.
Pollack was selected for the honor with Marian Guinn, the CEO of God’s Pantry Food Bank. The two women were recognized during an April 13 meeting of the Lexington-Fayette County Board of Health.