March 9, 2009 - Physicians Mauricio Arrien, Stephan Jannach, Kerry Lecky and Lay Khin recently joined Danville Regional Medical Center in the Hospital Medicine Department, providing hospitalist services.
Hospitalists are physicians who have completed medical school and residency training and are board certified by their areas of specialty, most commonly Internal Medicine or Family Medicine. Their primary professional focus is the comprehensive medical care of a hospitalized patient. They may engage in clinical care, teaching, research or leadership in the field of general Hospital Medicine.
“We are proud to welcome four new physicians to our hospital,” said Jerel Humphrey DRMC CEO. “Their presence here at DRMC will strengthen our current hospital medicine program and continue to remind everyone that DRMC is one of the leading care providers in the region.”
The concept of hospital medicine began in the mid-1990s when the government began restricting the number of hours physicians in training (interns and residents) could work under the premise that fatigue played a role in potential errors, particularly in the hospital setting. The movement of primary care physicians from the traditional practice of seeing office patients and hospital patients to seeing only office patients also greatly contributed to the need for hospital based physicians.
The conversion to a hospitalist-based care plan began at DRMC in 2004. This conversion was started by a request from the medical staff and driven by a national trend that existed for many years in other hospitals across the country as well as neighboring cities in the region.
“This is a challenging field of medicine,” said Frances DeChurch, M.D., medical director of the hospital medicine program at DRMC. “It has become its own specialty, with training programs developing specifically for hospital medicine. There is a challenge and intensity of working with hospitalized patients as well as working with the hospital to improve the quality of care and many doctors enjoy this type of practice.”
Most recently, Mauricio Arrien was a visiting physician in Bolivia. He attended to clinical rounds and conferences, accompanied a specialist in clinical oncology, and was a part of the pediatric oncology service. Arrien received his medical degree from Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia. In addition to English, Arrien can speak fluent Spanish and German.
Stephan Jannach worked as an assistant research scientist at the University of Miami, Department of Chemistry. He was named second year resident of the year by Anmed Health Family Medicine Residency Program (AAMC) in 2005 and received a merit scholarship from the University of Miami School of Medicine in 1998.
Prior to DRMC, Kerry Lecky, M.D., M.S. worked at Case Western Reserve University Hospitals of Cleveland as a family medicine resident physician. In February 2008, Lecky held a lecture series and skills workshop in the treatment of neonatal sepsis, jaundice, lethargy and feeding difficulty in Guatemala. Lecky was also a speaker at the 2007 AAFP Fourth International Family Medicine Development Workshop in Tucson, Az.
Finally, Dr. Lay Khin, MD, MPH, joins DRMC with a strong background in Internal Medicine. Khin has worked in Baltimore at both the Harbor Hospital Center and the Franklin Square Hospital Center in the primary care and diabetes and endocrine centers. Khin earned her medical degree in Burma and received her masters of public health at the University of Utah School of Medicine. Contributing to her professional experience, Khin is a member of the American College of Physicians and the American Association of Public Health. In 2001, Khin was awarded Outstanding Volunteer honors at Washington Hospital Center.
