SPECIALTY
HOSPITAL AT MONMOUTH NAMES MEDICAL DIRECTOR TO LEAD FULL-TIME TEAM OF PHYSICIANS
Dr. Eddie Santiago of Ocean Township Elevated to New Leadership Role
SPECIALTY
HOSPITAL AT MONMOUTH NAMES MEDICAL DIRECTOR
TO LEAD FULL-TIME TEAM OF PHYSICIANS
Dr. Eddie Santiago of Ocean Township Elevated to New Leadership Role
LAKEWOOD, NJ, February 20, 2007 — AcuteCare Health System (AHCS) has named Eddie Santiago, M.D., medical director of Specialty Hospital at Monmouth, its Long Branch-based long term acute care hospital.
In this new leadership role, Dr. Santiago is at the helm of the hospitalist group of physicians and an advanced nurse practitioner at the 25-bed state-licensed “hospital-within-a-hospital” facility located within Monmouth Medical Center, Long Branch.
The Ocean Township resident assumes this key managerial position after serving as associate medical director upon the opening of ACHS’ two long term acute care hospitals (LTACHs): Specialty Hospital at Monmouth in 2004 and Specialty Hospital at Kimball located within Kimball Medical Center, Lakewood, in 2005.
“I am extremely pleased to announce Dr. Santiago’s promotion to medical director of Specialty Hospital at Monmouth, where he will broaden his role and responsibilities in guiding its superbly qualified, hospital-based medical team,” says Howard Lebowitz, M.D., chief medical officer of Lakewood-based ACHS — the region’s leading independent provider of hospital-based care that extends beyond 25 days.
In 2005, ACHS became the first and only provider of extended hospital care in New Jersey to establish this hospitalist approach to providing intensive care to patients with medically complex conditions at both of its LTACHs.
“Dr. Santiago has been an instrumental member of our medical team from the beginning of both our LTACHs, particularly as we have implemented our innovative model of hospitalist care,” Dr. Lebowitz says. “He possesses the clinical skills and managerial experience that are essential in the delivery of comprehensive, specialized care to our patients who require treatment of more than one medical condition.
“Now as medical director at Specialty Hospital at Monmouth, Dr. Santiago will expand upon his proven ability to work in collaboration with all members of the dedicated medical team, the nursing staff and other health care professionals,” he adds. “This will help to ensure a seamless continuum of care that is essential to optimum healing and health for our patients.”
Dr. Santiago leads a hospitalist team at Specialty Hospital at Monmouth whose full-time members include staff physicians Indira Kanouka, M.D., Pranathi Mandadi, M.D., and Smitha Narasimhaswamy, M.D., wound care surgeon James Roros, M.D., and advanced nurse practitioner Deborah Sperling, R.N., M.S.N., APNC.
Dr. Santiago received his doctorate in medicine from Drexel University College of Medicine (formerly MCP Hahnemann University School of Medicine), Monmouth Medical Center’s Philadelphia-based teaching affiliate, and completed his residency in internal medicine at Monmouth. While serving as chief resident in 2001, he earned a Golden Stethoscope Award for teaching excellence from Hahnemann medical school students.
Dr. Santiago became a member of Monmouth Medical Center’s attending medical staff in 2001 and subsequently joined Specialty Hospital at Monmouth’s medical team upon its opening three years later. A member of the Latino American Association of Monmouth County and the League of Unified Cooperative of Hispanic Americans, he has served as moderator of Monmouth Medical Center’s Annual Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Conference, co-sponsored by the Lawrenceville-based New Jersey Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Association.
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AcuteCare Health System, LLC, is a privately owned corporation formed in 2002 to establish and manage long term acute care hospitals (LTACHs). An LTACH (pronounced L-tack) provides diagnostic and medical treatment and rehabilitation to patients whose conditions are medically complex and require an average length-of-stay of 25 days or more.
Although ACHS’s Specialty Hospital at Monmouth and Specialty Hospital at Kimball are located within major medical centers, they are independent entities that offer the benefits of a smaller, more individualized hospital setting, combined with such life-support services as ventilator weaning, complex wound care, parenteral nutrition, respiratory and cardiac monitoring, and dialysis.
Patients typically are referred to Specialty Hospital at Monmouth and Specialty Hospital at Kimball — through physician, nurse, case manager or social worker referral — from an intensive care unit.
For more information about Specialty Hospital at Monmouth, call 732-923-5037, and Specialty Hospital at Kimball, call 732-942-3597. Visit its Web site at www.acutecarehs.com.