Hospitalist Program at Phelps Expands

New Physicians Join Expanding Adult Hospitalist Program

Jill Waldman, MD, FHM, has been named Director of the Adult Hospitalist Program at Phelps Memorial Hospital Center. Dr. Waldman is board certified in internal medicine and is an experienced hospitalist director and emergency medicine physician. She earned her medical degree at Brooklyn College-SUNY Downstate College of Medicine and completed a residency in internal medicine at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla.

The hospitalist program at Phelps has been in existence for 10 years but, under Dr. Waldman's direction, the staff has grown to seven full-time physicians, six per diem physicians, and one nurse practitioner. Recent full-time additions to the staff, all of whom are board certified in internal medicine, are:

• Amarpreet Bains, MD, who earned his medical degree from Temple University School of Medicine in Philadelphia and completed a residency in medicine/pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh.
• Jeffrey Gindi, MD, who earned his medical degree from Albert Einstein College of Medicine and completed a residency in internal medicine at St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital Center.
• Falguni Kalra, MD, who earned her medical degree from Silesian School of Medicine in Poland and completed a residency in internal medicine at Capital Health Systems in New Jersey.
• Mark Rybstein, MD, who earned his medical degree from the SUNY Stonybrook College of Medicine and completed a residency in internal medicine at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan.
• Vivek Venkatakrishnan, MD, who earned his medical degree from M.S. Ramaiah Medical College in Bangalore, India, and completed a residency in internal medicine at Monmouth Medical Center in Long branch, NJ.

These full-time hospitalists join Nadine Halko, MD, who is board certified in internal medicine and has worked as a hospitalist at Phelps since 2005.

Hospitalists are board certified physicians who work full time in the hospital as partners with a patient's primary care physician, providing patients with consistent care during their hospital stay. Because hospitalists are active in the hospital 24 hours a day, they help to shorten patient waiting times for specialist consultations and coordinate lab and diagnostic testing.

Hospitalists are familiar with the hospital and its systems and functions because the hospital is the primary site of their practice. With a hospitalist coordinating care in the hospital, the patient's primary care physician is relieved of travel time back and forth between office and hospital, adding to the quality of care they can extend to patients seen in their offices.

The term "hospitalist" first appeared in a 1996 New England Journal of Medicine article by Drs. Robert Wachter and Lee Goldman. Hospitalist service has rapidly been gaining popularity over the last decade as doctors look to work within the managed care system and to ease the pressures of busy practices. The programs are known to contribute greatly to the overall quality of care and to enhance levels of patient satisfaction.

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