Steven Pantilat, MD, assumed the role of SHM’s new president at the 2005 Annual Meeting, along with a slate of other newly elected officers, including: Mary Jo Gorman, MD, MBA, president elect, William Atchley, MD, FACP, treasurer, and Lisa Kettering, MD, FACP, secretary. “These are exciting times of growth for SHM and hospital medicine,” said Jeanne Huddleston, MD, SHM’s immediate past president. “So we’re thrilled to bring on a team of extraordinary leaders who have long demonstrated their commitment to our organization’s goals and to the hospital medicine movement.”
“I’m extremely pleased to have this opportunity to lead SHM at this critical juncture,” said new President Dr. Pantilat. “Hospitalists are leading breakthrough initiatives around the country in areas such as patient safety, hospital leadership, and quality of care. But there are other important areas where we can make a difference. My goals for SHM this year are twofold. First, I plan to promote research in hospital medicine to discover how best to improve the quality of care for hospitalized patients. Second, I have appointed a Palliative Care Task force to examine how hospitalists can improve the care of patients with serious and life threatening illnesses.”
Dr. Pantilat is an associate professor of clinical medicine in the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. He also is a hospitalist attending on the medical service and is the founding director of both the Palliative Care Consult Service and the Comfort Care Suites, a 2-bed inpatient palliative care unit at UCSF. Dr. Pantilat is a full-time faculty member in the Program in Medical Ethics at UCSF, a faculty scholar of the Soros Foundation Project on Death in America and a recipient of a research career development award from the National Institute on Aging. Dr. Pantilat is also the director of the UCSF Palliative Care leadership Center, which trains teams from hospitals across the country to develop and implement palliative care services in their own institutions.
In addition to his research on improving palliative care, Dr. Pantilat teaches palliative care at UCSF and is coeditor of an end of life care series in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) titled “Perspectives on Care at the Close of Life.”
A charter member of SHM, Dr. Pantilat has served in numerous leadership positions through the years, including as first chair of the SHM Ethics Committee, member of the Board of Directors and treasurer.
SHM President-elect Mary Jo Gorman, MD, MBA, is chief medical officer for IPC The Hospitalist Company, a private practice hospital medicine company. There she works with more than 300 physicians in developing programs and strategies that enhance clinical performance and drive the delivery system towards more efficient care and greater patient satisfaction. She also oversees IPC’s physician training, mentoring and retention programs, as well as IPC’s call center nurses, healthcare services and
clinical studies.
Dr. Gorman has been a practicing hospitalist since 1997, when she founded the first hospital medicine practice in St. Louis, MO. Her original group merged into IPC in January 1999 and since that time has grown to become the dominant hospital medicine group in the city. Dr. Gorman is a charter member of SHM and has served on multiple committees, including chairman of the Public Policy Committee.
New Treasurer William Atchley, MD is the director of the hospital medicine service at Sentara Careplex Hospital in Hampton, VA. He has been a practicing hospitalist since 1995, when he founded the hospital medicine practice for Sentara Medical Group in Norfolk, VA. The program grew to provide coverage to three local hospitals. He also helped to create the Division of Hospital Medicine in Sentara Medical Group. In 2002 he led Sentara Medical Group to start the hospital medicine service at Sentara Careplex Hospital. At that time he founded Peninsula Inpatient Medicine Specialists, which now has eight hospitalists.