Miguel Angel Villagra Brings Management Skills to The Hospitalist’s Volunteer Editorial Advisory Board

Meet Team Hospitalist

Team Hospitalist is a voluntary editorial advisory board composed of physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, and administrators working in hospitalist groups all across the United States. The 12-member group meets monthly to discuss hot topics in hospital medicine and meets annually at the SHM annual meeting.

Joshua LaBrin, MD, FACP, SFHM

Dr. LaBrin is an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, working as an academic hospitalist. He completed his medical degree at Temple University School of Medicine in Philadelphia and then an internal medicine/pediatrics residency at the University of Pittsburgh, where he served as chief resident. He served as a hospital medicine fellow at Mayo Clinic (Hospital Medicine), Rochester, Minn., in the Department of Medicine, Division of Hospital Internal Medicine. He is actively involved in medical education, both in faculty development and in the clinical education of students and residents on the teaching services at the University of Utah Hospital.

Elizabeth Cook, MD

Dr. Cook is medical director of Hospitalist Associates of Virginia, where she provides management and coordination of care of acutely ill medical and surgical patients. She also serves as supervising physician at Matrix Medical Network, where she provides oversight to nurse practitioners through monthly chart reviews.

Lisa Courtney

Courtney serves as director of operations at Baptist Health Systems in Birmingham, Ala. She is responsible for accounts receivable management across a multisite hospitalist program; develops, maintains, and attains budget objectives; and works with the medical directors and hospital staff on quality initiatives and process improvement opportunities.

Amanda Trask, MBA, MHA, FACHE, CMPE, SFHM

Trask is national vice president of the hospital medicine service line for Catholic Health Initiatives, a nonprofit faith-based health system formed in 1996 and based in Englewood, Colo.

Robert Zipper, MD, MMM, SFHM

Dr. Zipper is a regional chief medical officer at Tacoma, Wash.–based Sound Physicians, where he provides clinical and operational oversight of Sound’s various service lines in the Pacific Northwest. An active SHM member, he has served as chairman of the SHM Leadership Committee.

James Levy, PA-C, SFHM

Levy has been a clinician for 40 years and a hospitalist for nearly 20 years. He is a founder and currently managing partner and vice president of human resources of iNDIGO Health Partners, a rapidly expanding Midwestern hospitalist company also active in post-acute care and inpatient telemedicine. He has been active in SHM for seven years and is especially interested in the preservation and strengthening of rural hospitals.

Michael Beck, MD, FAAP

Dr. Beck has been an academic hospitalist since 2001. He is board-certified in internal medicine/pediatrics and a certified green belt in Six Sigma. His research interests include applying Lean/Six Sigma to healthcare quality. His clinical interests include hypercoagulability, rheumatic diseases, and orthostatic intolerance/postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. He started a pediatric diagnostic dilemma service and pediatric post-acute-care hospital-to-home transition service.

Geeta Arora, MD

Dr. Arora is board-certified in internal medicine and integrative holistic medicine. She practices locum tenens hospitalist medicine, telemedicine, and integrative holistic medicine. She also consults physicians interested in locum tenens medicine. Her integrative medicine work is based out of New York City.

Sarah Stella, MD

Dr. Stella is a hospitalist and physician adviser at an academically affiliated safety-net hospital in Denver. She is an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

Miguel Angel Villagra, MD

Dr. Villagra is a hospitalist based in Batesville, Ark. He is medical director of the hospitalist medicine program at White River Medical Center.

David Weidig, MD

Dr. Weidig is a regional medical director for Sound Physicians, based in Tacoma, Wash.

Benjamin Frizner, MD

Dr. Frizner is a former hospitalist and now a post-acute-care physician. He is the director of the long-term ventilator unit at Future Care Irvington in Baltimore for CEP America.