Rebecca Jaffe, MD, has been elevated to the permanent role of director of the division of hospital medicine at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. Dr. Jaffe has been the interim director since July 2020.
Dr. Rebecca Jaffe
In the position, Dr. Jaffe will be responsible for leading an academic hospital medicine division that includes 36 faculty and 10 advanced-practice providers. She said her focus will be on developing physicians, advanced providers, and the inpatient practice model used while “educating the next generation of creative and compassionate clinicians.”
Dr. Jaffe is associate professor of medicine at Jefferson’s Sidney Kimmel Medical College and the hospital’s director of clinical learning environment improvement.
Christopher Freer, DO, recently was named the new senior vice president for emergency hospital medicine for RWJBarnabas Health (West Orange, N.J.). In a concurrent move, Maninder “Dolly” Abraham, MD, was named RWJBH’s chief of hospital medicine. The selections were made as RWJBH has become a direct employer for Envision Physician Services, a former hospital partner.
Dr. Freer has spent the past 5 years with RWJBH, where he has served as emergency services system director since 2015. He previously worked in leadership roles at Saint Barnabas Medical Center.
Dr. Abraham was previously medical director of Saint Barnabas’ hospitalist program, as well as a regional medical director with Envision during her 17 years of experience.
Sheetal Patel, MD, has been named the new regional medical director for Eagle Telemedicine (Cincinnati, Ohio), a physician-led company that provides telehospitalist services to hospitals around the country.
Dr. Patel will work closely with hospital administrators and medical directors to provide high-level telemedicine services, as well as devising processes and guidelines to guarantee streamlined care across Eagle’s facilities.
Dr. Patel has spent 4 years as a telehospitalist for Eagle, where she has been in charge of guiding on-site and remote staff members and providing training to new telehospitalists.
Timothy Crone, MD, MBA, has been elevated to the role of president of Cleveland Clinic Mercy Hospital (Canton, Ohio). The move comes as Cleveland Clinic recently added Mercy Medical Center as a full member of its health system.
Dr. Timothy Crone
Dr. Crone has served as chief medical officer at Cleveland Clinic Hillcrest Hospital in Cleveland since 2019. Previously, he was a medical director in enterprise business intelligence and analytics in medical operations at Cleveland Clinic’s main campus. He also was vice chairman of hospital medicine and has served as a staff hospitalist since 2010.
In addition to his role as president, Dr. Crone plans to work in patient care at Mercy Hospital.
Just prior to the start of 2021, Wake Forest Baptist Health (Winston-Salem, N.C.) established a “Hospitalist at Home” program with the goal of reducing the length of time patients spend in the hospital.
Hospitalist at Home was created as the COVID-19 pandemic threatened hospital capacity. Wakehealth’s innovative approach involves developing an at-home plan with each patient before they leave the facility. Patients include those with COVID-19 who are stable but require supplemental oxygen or have diseases that need intravenous medication administration.
At home, a Wakehealth paramedic visits the patient while a hospitalist communicates and reviews the patient’s care plan via smartphone, tablet, or computer. The visits continue until the patient’s hospital-related care is complete.
The Multicare Health System (Tacoma, Wash.) has bulked up its hospitalist program by partnering with nationwide, physician-led health care provider Sound Physicians. The goal is to provide health care management at a regional level instead of individually per hospital.
Sound Physicians, which already contracts to provide hospitalist services at two Multicare facilities in Washington, transitioned its services to three other facilities as of April 5, 2021.
Conemaugh Meyersdale Medical Center (Meyersdale, Pa.) has started a hospitalist program at its facility in Somerset County. The program will be led by nurse practitioners Zeke Feyock and Sarah Piscatello.
© Frontline Medical Communications 2018-2021. Reprinted with permission, all rights reserved.
