News from the Department of Medicine
September 11, 2017

Inaugural Town Hall Meeting Brings Together Staff from Across the Department of Medicine

The Department of Medicine held its first Staff Town Hall meeting in July, filling the Smilow Multipurpose Room with staff members from across our divisions and locations. The meeting featured talks by Dr. Luis Angel on the strategic plans for NYU Langone's rapidly growing lung transplant program, Dr. Adam Skolnick (shown above) on "HOCUS POCUS" or housestaff cardiac point‐of‐care ultrasound, and Dr. Timothy Niewold on the Colton Center for Autoimmunity. Katy Wesnousky, department administrator and chief of staff, kicked off the meeting by describing the new Department of Medicine Employee Recognition Program, which presents the opportunity for all faculty and staff to recognize their staff peers for exceptional job performance.

View the photo gallery from the meeting (password: DOM in all caps)

Quick Links

  • Dr. Kathy Hochman, associate chair for quality in the Department of Medicine, talks about NYU Langone's successful discharge-before-noon initiative in Today's Hospitalist: "The discharge-before-noon metric is a measure of teamwork and coordination on your service."
  • The Master Scholars Program in Humanistic Medicine's Spring 2017 colloquium, co-sponsored by Perlmutter Cancer Center at NYU Langone, featured Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer and The Gene: An Intimate History. His talk explored the history of cancer and its changing landscape within the institution of medicine—including the way the disease has been conceptualized, visualized, and treated over time. Watch a video of the event.

Division of Geriatric Medicine and Palliative Care
Leadership News

Saima Ajmal, MD, recently assumed the position of section chief of geriatrics at NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue and clinic chief of the Bellevue Geriatrics Clinic. Dr. Ajmal is an assistant professor of internal medicine who joined the division as a geriatrics fellow in 2008 and was appointed to the faculty in 2009. She is a graduate of Nishtar Medical School in Pakistan and did her American internship and residency at Lutheran Hospital in Brooklyn, now NYU Langone Hospital - Brooklyn. From 2009 until 2017, she was the associate director of the geriatrics fellowship where she was extremely active in assuring that geriatrics fellows were deeply involved in quality improvement activities. During her tenure as associate fellowship director, all fellows presented quality and performance improvement projects at the national meeting of the American Geriatrics Society and at NYU's annual Quality and Safety Day. Dr. Ajmal is the current president of the Metropolitan Area Geriatrics Society and serves nationally on the Council of Local Affiliates of the American Geriatrics Society.

Nina Blachman, MD, MHPE, has been named the program director for the geriatrics fellowship as of July, 2017. Dr. Blachman is a graduate of Princeton University and Stony Brook Medical School, and was a primary care resident here at NYU. She did her geriatrics fellowship at Mount Sinai Medical Center, where she served as chief fellow. After joining the NYU Langone geriatrics faculty in 2014, she immediately began teaching and mentoring medical students and internal medicine residents who rotate through geriatrics. She has developed an OSCE for the geriatrics fellows and faculty, and is an inaugural graduate of the Maastricht University Masters Degree Program in Health Professions Education. Dr. Blachman is involved in several national health education grants and was recently awarded a Merrin Master Clinician Fellowship.

Updates on The Mobile Insulin Titration Implementation (MITI) Program

Natalie Levy, MD, leads the Mobile Insulin Titration Implementation (MITI) Team, for which she was awarded the National Patient Safety Foundation's 2017 Stand Up for Patient Safety Management Award. Here are some updates from the MITI Program:

  • Of the 51 Gouverneur patients enrolled in MITI (with at least one RN/team involved), over 91% rate of reaching the patients who enroll on a weekly basis
  • 71% of PAs and 79% of MDs have referred, so MITI is universally utilized
  • On average it takes 10 minutes to enroll a patient and 15 minutes per weekly phone contact, including all prep, phone calls, and documentation
  • 92% of Gouverneur patients enrolled reached their optimal insulin dose, and in an average of only 20 days. The average A1c dropped in that time (pre and post MITI) was 2 points - from 11.2 to start to 9.2 at finish, which is quite a success for a consecutive A1c check
  • 94% of patients are comfortable sharing information via text, nearly 97% prefer it to coming to the clinic, and most said it helped to remind them to check their sugars, take their insulin and make healthy food choices

Recent Publications

  • DGIMCI's Drs. Harry Saag, Leora Horwitz, and Patrick Cocks, and colleagues, recently published "Warm Handoffs: a Novel Strategy to Improve End-of-Rotation Care Transitions" in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. The article was also featured on Medscape.
  • Peter Berczeller, MD, clinical professor of medicine, recently published his first novel Max: It Should Only Be by Repeater Books in London, and distributed in the US by Random House. Dr. Berczeller's previous books include Doctors and Patients: What We Feel About You (1994), Medical Complications of Quadriplegia (1986), and a memoir, The Little White Coat. Dr. Berczeller has been associated with NYU School of Medicine, NYU Langone Health, and Bellevue for 59 years.

Faculty Group Practice Welcomes New Providers & Practices

NYU Langone Ambulatory Care Rego Park
Halis Sonmez, MD (Endocrinology)

NYU Langone Cardiology Associates—Delray Beach
Michael Arno, PA
Stephen Cohen, MD
Ivan Coronado, MD
Heather Gawron, NP
Stephen Saltz, MD
Susan Sloan, NP
Louis Snyder, MD

NYU Langone Diabetes and Endocrine Associates
Melissa Sum, MD (Endocrinology)

NYU Langone Gastroenterology Associates
Ira Jacobson, MD
Melissa Latorre, MD
Mary Olson, NP

NYU Langone at Trinity
Atul Sharma, MD (Cardiology)
Alexander Slotwiner, MD (Cardiology)

Preston Robert Tisch Center for Men's Health
Scott Smukalla, MD (Gastroenterology)

Events & Opportunities

SEP
13

Advance Care Planning: What Medical Professionals Need to Know about End of Life Care

Speakers include Joshua Chodosh, MD
Director, Freedman Research Program on Aging and Cognition
Professor, Medicine and Population Health

SEP
13

OSR Outstanding Postdoctoral Scholar Award

In recognition of outstanding postdoctoral achievements, the Office of Science and Research (OSR) will select five NYU Langone Health postdoctoral scholars, who will each receive $3,500 to attend a scientific conference of their choosing. Special emphasis will be given to nominees whose contributions go beyond their research, as demonstrated by service to the scientific community through teaching, mentoring, and volunteering. Nominations must be submitted by faculty mentors and should be completed no later than 5pm, Wednesday, September 13, 2017.

OCT
24

Faculty/Staff Meeting & Meet-the-Leaders Networking Session & Reception

We Want to Hear from You!

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