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Society of Hospital Medicine Elects New Officers

Posted on: Thursday, 15 June 2006, 15:00 CDT

PHILADELPHIA, June 15 /PRNewswire/ -- The Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM) has elected a slate of new officers for the 2006-2007 term. The new officers include: Mary Jo Gorman, M.D., MBA, president; Russell Holman, M.D., president-elect; Patrick Cawley, M.D., treasurer; and Jack Percelay, M.D., MPH, secretary. The officers were formally inducted at the SHM annual meeting held recently in Washington, D.C.

"Hospitalists are the new change agents in healthcare today and that puts us -- and the SHM leadership -- squarely in the spotlight, providing us an exciting opportunity to articulate our concerns and promote our activities on key issues affecting patient care, quality of hospital care, and hospital leadership," said Larry Wellikson, M.D., FACP, CEO of SHM. "We are pleased to induct a strong new team of officers who are committed to continuing the positive momentum SHM has generated for hospitalists."

"Hospitalists are among the best and brightest in the healthcare industry today, and I am proud to serve as the president of the premier organization representing them," said new SHM President Dr. Gorman. "Hospitalists are in a unique position to impact safety and quality for thousands of patients. I will be focusing this year on working with our members to leverage the many opportunities that hospitalist medicine presents for improving patient care."

Dr. Gorman, a charter member of SHM, is chief medical officer for IPC -- The Hospitalist Company, the nation's leading private practice hospitalist company. Headquartered in St. Louis, Dr. Gorman works with more than 300 physicians nationwide in developing programs and strategies that enhance clinical performance and drive the delivery system toward 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 hospitalist practice in St. Louis. Her original group merged into IPC in January 1999 and since that time has grown to become the dominant hospitalist group in the city.

A cum laude graduate of St. Louis University, Dr. Gorman earned a Bachelor of Arts in chemistry/biology in 1981, and then went on to earn her M.D. in 1984 from Southern Illinois University School of Medicine in Springfield. In 1996 she earned a MBA from Washington University, Olin School of Business, in St. Louis.

SHM's new president-elect, Russell Holman, M.D., is senior vice president and national medical director for Cogent Healthcare, an organization that manages hospital medicine programs throughout the country. He is responsible for program implementation and management, quality systems reporting and auditing, physician leadership development and data systems integration.

A hospitalist since the mid-1990's, Dr. Holman's commitment to hospital medicine and to SHM has helped in the establishment of nationally recognized standards in the areas of quality improvement activities, models of medical education, observation units, communication systems, compensation plans, case management, surgical co-management collaborations and patient-flow initiatives. A charter member of SHM, Dr. Holman served on the board of directors as treasurer from 2004-2005. He was previously chair of the leadership development committee, chair of the Midwest council, course director of the SHM Leadership Academy, and a member of the public policy committee. He recently co-authored the "Update in Hospital Medicine," appearing in the Annals of Internal Medicine. In 2002, he received the SHM award for "Outstanding Service in Hospital Medicine."

Dr. Holman graduated from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and trained as a resident and chief medical resident at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Currently, he serves on two national editorial boards for medical publications and is co-authoring a comprehensive textbook and electronic decision support tool for hospital medicine.

New Treasurer Patrick Cawley, M.D., is a hospitalist at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston where he currently serves as interim executive medical director of MUSC Medical Center. He previously served as the chief of the section of hospital medicine, vice chairman of clinical affairs in the Department of Medicine, and associate executive medical director at MUSC Medical Center.

Dr. Cawley received his Bachelor of Science degree in 1988 from the University of Scranton, Scranton, Pennsylvania, and his M.D. degree from Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C. He completed an internal medicine residency at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Later this year he will complete his MBA from the University of Massachusetts -- Amherst.

A charter member of the SHM, Dr. Cawley has served on numerous committees and was previously secretary of the board for the 2004-2005 term. He has worked in both academic and nonacademic hospitals and has served as a consultant to numerous hospitals in the development of hospital medicine programs.

Dr. Percelay, SHM's new secretary, is a pediatric hospitalist with Virtua Inpatient Pediatrics, a large pediatric hospital medicine group in Southern New Jersey with 14 full-time hospitalists covering two hospitals. Since 1991 Dr. Percelay has worked in a variety of community-based settings including the general pediatric ward, pediatric sub-specialty units, pediatric intensive care unit (PICU), neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), and the emergency room.

A charter member of SHM and one of the nation's first pediatric hospitalists, Dr. Percelay currently holds the pediatric seat on the SHM board in addition to serving on the public policy committee and co-chairing the pediatric committee. He has been intimately involved in collaborative pediatric hospital medicine projects such as the PRIS ("prize") research network and the Denver 2005 and 2007 pediatric hospital medicine conferences.

Dr. Percelay also is the founding chairperson and immediate past chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Hospital Medicine and co-authored of the AAP policy statement on pediatric hospitalists. He completed his medical school and pediatric training at the University of California, San Francisco, along with an MPH at the University of California at Berkeley.

The Society of Hospital Medicine is the premier medical society representing hospitalists -- physicians whose primary focus is the care of hospitalized patients. Over the past few years, research studies proving that hospitalists decrease patient lengths of stay, hospital costs and patient mortality rates while increasing patient satisfaction, have galvanized the hospital medicine profession and spurred demand for hospitalists nationwide. Currently, hospital medicine is the fastest-growing medical specialty in the U.S., with today's 15,000 hospitalists projected to grow to about 30,000 by the end of the decade. For more information about SHM, visit http://www.hospitalmedicine.org/ .

The Society of Hospital Medicine

CONTACT: Lisa Freeman, +1-818-597-8453, lisaf@kevinross.net, for TheSociety of Hospital Medicine

Web site: http://www.hospitalmedicine.org/

Source: PRNewswire

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