Faculty Group Practice Newsletter

Asthma exacerbations, panic attacks, rashes, and colds may make up an average clinic day for a Family Medicine physician. However, it’s not every day the patient population includes state senators and representatives, their staff members, and other visitors to the Texas State Capitol.

Through innovative treatment options that relieve pain and restore function, hand and wrist surgery can improve quality of life for patients of all ages. BaiJing (Jing) Qin, MD, a new member of UTMB’s Plastic Surgery team specializing in hand and wrist procedures, knows this well.

With a high prevalence of heart disease among local populations, having a robust, dynamic cardiac care program in the region is critical. That includes heart failure services, which UTMB’s Division of Cardiovascular Medicine expertly delivers via its team of fellowship-trained heart failure (HF) specialists.

As UTMB grows its services across multiple service lines and locations, patients in southern Brazoria County are among the latest to benefit from this growth – with the addition of a new general surgeon serving the Angleton-Lake Jackson area.

Congratulations to Dr. Rakesh Vadhera, the Academy of Master Clinicians' May Clinician of the Month.

Congratulations to Ursula Sedgwick, Coding, Billing and Reimbursement Auditor

Chelsie Chonoski, MSN, APRN, FNP-C, nurse practitioner in the Division of Urology, shares her knowledge of bladder cancer detection.

An advanced beneficiary notice (ABN) is a written notice which a provider gives to a Medicare beneficiary before services are furnished when the provider believes that Medicare probably or certainly will not pay for some or all of the services.

Delivering world-class clinical care, education, and research, UTMB is known for its global impact – with one particular entity extending that reach to the most remote places on earth.

On December 29, 2022, the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 enacted a new one-time, eight-hour training requirement for all Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)-registered practitioners on the treatment and management of patients with opioid or other substance use disorders.

April has been designated Oral, Head, and Neck Cancer Awareness Month, bringing attention to the symptoms and risk factors of these diseases – and the fact that diagnoses are on the rise. More than 54,000 new cases are expected in 2023.

On Sunday, April 2, UTMB Health participated in IRONMAN 70.3 Texas as the official medical provider for the prestigious competition.

Congratulations to Justin Yun, MS2 in John Sealy School of Medicine.

UTMB Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery's "Jaw in a Day" reconstruction procedure was recently featured in Community Impact.

We celebrated the contributions of our physicians on National Doctors' Day, March 30!

This month we will focus on coding for laterality for diagnosis coding as this has been identified as a significant opportunity and is a key element of the coding and the reimbursement process.

Congratulations to Dr. Arsalan Saleem, the Academy of Master Clinicians' April Clinician of the Month.

This month, we are pleased to recognize Cheryl Breaux, AGACNP, Department of Surgery, Division of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery.

When a patient presents with an infection, antibiotics in the penicillin family are often the best option for clinical efficacy, cost-effectiveness, and safety. An effort currently under way at health care institutions nationwide, including UTMB, is helping ensure more patients can utilize this first-line agent when needed.