Dr. Vashist
Amit Vashist, MD, MBA, CPE, FACP, FAPA, FACHE, SFHM, senior vice president and chief clinical officer, Ballad Health, Tennessee/Virginia was recognized by Becker’s Healthcare as one of the top 110 health system chief medical officers to know. The Becker’s Healthcare team accepted nominations for this list and selected CMOs and other equivalent titles through an editorial review process.
Dr. Vashist’s responsibilities focus on clinical quality and safety, value-based initiatives to improve quality while reducing cost of care, clinical innovation, performance improvement, clinical transformation, and oversight of the enterprise-wide clinical delivery of care, and medical staff affairs. Additionally, he provides administrative oversight of the Ballad Health Clinical Council, a leading model of physician partnership for clinical transformation and outcomes improvement.
Dr. Unaka
Ndidi Unaka, MD, MEd, medical director quality improvement and analytics, HealthVine, Cincinnati Children’s, and associate professor at the University of Cincinnati department of pediatrics was named a 2023 Career Woman of Achievement by the Greater Cincinnati YWCA.
Dr. Unaka has been recognized nationally for her work in quality improvement, health equity, medical education, and community engagement. She is the author of more than 50 articles and other publications and is a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Hospital Medicine. Dr. Unaka has trained many of Cincinnati’s pediatricians through her role as associate program director of the Pediatric Residency Training Program. She is currently co-lead for the Health Equity Network which supports 10 clinical teams seeking to eliminate disparities in child health outcomes by race, and or socioeconomic status.
Dr. Unaka earned her medical degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich., and completed her residency at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.
Dr. Chippa
Venu Madhav Chippa, MD, recently joined Ascension St. Vincent in Evansville, Ind., as an internist and academic hospitalist following a nearly year-long search. He will provide care to hospital-admitted patients in the inpatient unit, offer internal medicine consultations to other physicians, and teach internal medicine residents of the Southwest Indiana Internal Medicine Residency Program at the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis. Before joining Ascension St. Vincent, Dr. Chippa worked as a hospitalist at The Jewish Hospital—Mercy Health, Cincinnati.
Dr. Chippa earned his medical degree from the Gandhi Medical College, Secunderabad, India, and moved to the U.S. for internal medicine residency training and staff positions. He completed his residency at St John’s Episcopal Hospital, Rockaway, N.Y.
The hospitalist program at FirstHealth of the Carolinas, Pinehurst, N.C. celebrated its 20th anniversary recently, and FirstHealth’s Moore Regional Hospital (including Hoke and Richmond campuses) was recognized by Business North Carolina magazine as one of the state’s best hospitals and as a top hospital in patient satisfaction. Jenifir Bruno, MD, chief medical officer at FirstHealth, was one of the internal medicine physicians who established FirstHealth Hospitalist Service in 2003.
Dr. Bruno
The program, which started with the four founding physicians admitting and caring for patients from its family medicine clinics, has grown to include more than 100 inpatient hospitalist practitioners. Along the way pediatrics, neuro hospitalists, and intensivists were added to the service.
Dr. Bruno earned her medical degree from Creighton University in Omaha, Neb., and completed her residency at the University of Kentucky Medical Center in Lexington, Ky.
Dr. Ronen
Joshua Ronen, MD, has been promoted from instructor of clinical medicine to assistant professor of clinical medicine at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center. He is a hospitalist within the division of hospital medicine at UCSF Medical Center at Parnassus Heights (day and night rounding) and St. Mary’s Medical Center (day rounding). He supervises, along with internal medicine house staff, admissions, and cross-over duties. This academic year he is also rounding on the adult hospital medicine service at both hospitals, as well as routinely teaching medical students and internal medicine residents in noon conferences and small group settings.
Dr. Ronen earned his medical degree at Ross University School of Medicine in Portsmouth, Dominica, and completed his residency at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Odessa, Texas.
Imtiaz Khokhar, MD, FACP, FHM, has joined Beebe Healthcare, Lewes, Del., as a hospitalist at its Margaret H. Rollins Lewes Campus. Before joining Beebe Healthcare, Dr. Khokhar was a member of the Travel Team Hospital group where he worked with hospitals in various cities in New York, as well as with Bayhealth.
Dr. Khokhar earned his medical degree at the University of Karachi, Sindh Medical College in Pakistan, completed his residency at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine, Flushing Hospital Medical Center, Flushing, N.Y., and completed his geriatric fellowship at New York Medical College, Valhalla, N.Y.
Kwame Dapaah-Afriyie, MD, MBA, FACP, FGCPS, SFHM, has joined the board of directors for HopeHealth, a hospice, palliative, and home
Dr. Dapaah-Afriyie
health care provider in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Dr. Dapaah-Afriyie is the director of hospital medicine at The Miriam Hospital and a professor of medicine at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University in Providence.
He earned his medical degree from the University of Science/Technology in Kumasi, Ghana, and completed his residency at The Miriam Hospital. After completing his residency, Dr. Dapaah-Afriyie founded Miriam Hospital’s hospitalist program in 1997 and was named director of the division of hospital medicine in 2004.
Dr. Cohn
Steven L. Cohn, MD, MACP, SFHM, professor emeritus in the department of medicine at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine was recently elected as a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London.
Dr. Cohn is the former director of the medical consultation service at Jackson Memorial Hospital and medical director of the UHealth Preoperative Assessment Center and medical consultation service at the University of Miami Hospital. He relocated to Miami after 30 years at the State University of New York-Downstate Medical Center, in Brooklyn, N.Y. where he is also a clinical professor of medicine emeritus. He was the division chief of general medicine at SUNY Downstate and the director of the medical consultation service and preoperative clinic at Kings County Hospital. Though Dr. Cohn retired in 2018, he continues to give perioperative presentations at national meetings, including SHM Converge. He shares his knowledge in the field through grand rounds presentations in academic centers across the country and speaking engagements. His latest book, Decision Making in Perioperative Medicine—Clinical Pearls, continues to be a best-seller, and he is a nationally recognized expert in perioperative medicine.
Dr. Cohn earned his medical degree from the University of Monterrey and completed his residency at SUNY-Downstate Medical Center.
James Troy, MD, MHS, has been appointed as the associate chief for the Albert B. Chandler Hospital at the University of Kentucky, Lexington.
Dr. Troy
Dr. Troy joined the University of Kentucky Division of Hospital Medicine in 2013. He previously helped develop and launch a hematology malignancy co-management service, served as the unit-level medical director for the Chandler Hospital’s primary COVID-19 unit for the first two years of the pandemic, and will continue as the unit-level medical director for one of the hospital’s progressive care medicine floors. In his new role, he will help implement new systems and protocols to improve patient care and division operations.
Dr. Troy earned his medical and Master of Health Science degrees at Yale University, New Haven, Conn., and completed his residency at the University of California San Francisco.