Faculty Group Practice Newsletter

Welcome to UTMB Health!

Compassion for others is a core quality of many individuals who pursue careers in health care and public service alike. The common ground in these two professions came to the forefront to help a patient the evening of Nov. 5.

The desire to fulfill a need in healthcare sparked an education and career journey that led Raj Vaghjiani, MD, to pursue surgical oncology as a specialty. Now, as a new member of UTMB’s Surgical Oncology Division, he applies his expertise and skills to help patients with cancer on the path to survivorship.

When you ask our current Urgent Care APP Lead, Kennikqua “Nikki” Thompson, MSN, APRN, FNP, ENP, what the busiest time is in urgent care, she says undoubtedly the winter season, better known as cold and flu season.

Aging does not have to mean slowing down – even when joints like the hip and knee no longer work as ably as they once did. Advances in the realm of joint replacement make it possible for active individuals to keep up their busy lifestyles well into their senior years.

Congratulations to Austin Johnson, DO, PGY-2 in the Department of Otolaryngology. He was the first to recognize the meeting space off the parking garage sky bridge at League City Campus.

The Dashboard of Integrated Measures of Access (DIMA) places focus on metrics to help drive patient access in our primary care and specialty care ambulatory practice by ambulatory dyad. It takes into account several internally and externally benchmarked metrics.

Check out the latest edition of UTMB's Population Health Newsletter for special features on Lung Cancer Screening Awareness.

We are pleased to announce an update and improvement to the functionality of the Post-Op MD Navigator tool, effective Thursday, Dec. 7. The change affects all OR locations including Labor and Delivery, Cath/EP Labs, and all Endoscopy areas for the system.

Medicare is basing the new code on the longitudinal care relationship not the serious or complex condition. They believe this code reflects the time, intensity, and expense required to build longitudinal relationships with patients and address most of their health care needs with consistency and continuity over long periods of time.

Congratulations to Peeyush Bhargava, MD, MBA, the Academy of Master Clinicians' December Clinician of the Month. Dr. Bhargava is a Professor in the Department of Radiology.