SPECIALTY HOSPITALS AT
KIMBALL AND MONMOUTH ESTABLISH DEDICATED HOSPITAL-BASED MEDICAL TEAM--First
LTACHs in New Jersey to Offer Hospitalist Approach to Delivery of Care
LAKEWOOD, NJ, October 4, 2006 — AcuteCare Health System’s
two long term acute care hospitals have established a hospitalist group of
physicians and an advanced nurse practitioner that is dedicated to caring for
its complex patients.
By assembling this highly qualified, hospital-based medical team, both Specialty
Hospital at Monmouth Specialty Hospital at Kimball become the first and only
LTACHs in New Jersey to offer a hospitalist approach to providing intensive care
to patients over an extended period of time.
“We have found that having physicians and an advanced practice nurse who are
trained and experienced in pulmonary, complex wounds and infectious disease
dedicated full time to our patients results in better medical management of our
patients,” says Howard Lebowitz, M.D., chief medical director of Lakewood-based
ACHS — the region’s leading independent provider of hospital-based care that
extends beyond 25 days.
Dr. Lebowitz leads the medical team at both 25-bed state-licensed
“hospital-within-a-hospital” facilities: Specialty Hospital at Monmouth, located
within Monmouth Medical Center, Long Branch, and Specialty Hospital at Kimball,
located within Kimball Medical Center, Lakewood. Other members of the
hospitalist group include:
• Eddie Santiago M.D., ACHS associate medical director.
• Indira Kanouka M.D., staff physician and medical care director of Specialty
Hospital at Kimball.
• Pranathi Mandadi, M.D., staff physician and medical care director of Specialty
Hospital at Monmouth.
• James Roros M.D., wound care surgeon at Specialty Hospital at Monmouth.
• Deborah Sperling, R.N., M.S.N., APNC, advanced nurse practitioner at Specialty
Hospital at Kimball and Monmouth.
Profiles on Specialty Hospitals’ Medical Team members
CHIEF MEDICAL DIRECTOR HOWARD LEBOWITZ, M.D., OF LAKEWOOD received his medical
degree at Harvard Medical School, Boston, where he graduated cum laude from the
Harvard-Massachusetts of Technology Division of Health Sciences and Technology
and earned the DuPont Young Investigator of the Year Award from the American
College of Chest Physicians.
After completing his internship and residency in internal medicine at Boston’s
Brigham and Women’s Hospital, he served as an attending physician at that
Harvard teaching affiliate for five years and earned his board certification in
internal medicine before joining the medical staff at Monmouth Medical Center in
2001.
SPECIALTY HOSPITALS’ ASSOCIATE MEDICAL DIRECTOR EDDIE SANTIAGO, M.D., OF OCEAN
TOWNSHIP 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’s attending medical staff in 2001 and
subsequently joined Specialty Hospital’s medical team upon its opening. A member
of the Latino American Association of Monmouth County and the League of Unified
Cooperative of Hispanic Americans, he most recently served as moderator of
Monmouth Medical Center’s 15th annual Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Conference,
co-sponsored by the New Jersey Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Association.
After earning her medical degree from Aleppo University’s Medical School in
Syria, INDIRA KANOUKA, M.D., OF MARLBORO, MEDICAL CARE DIRECTOR OF SPECIALTY
HOSPITAL AT MONMOUTH, came to the United States and completed her internal
medicine residency at Monmouth Medical Center. She then spent nearly two years
on the medical staff of Horizon Health Center in Jersey City before joining
Specialty Hospital in 2005. Dr. Kanouka is board certified in internal member
and is an associate member of the American College of Physicians-American
Society of Internal Medicine.
Another member of the medical team at Specialty Hospital at Monmouth is SURGEON
JAMES ROROS, M.D., OF OCEAN TOWNSHIP, who serves as WOUND CARE SPECIALIST. A
graduate of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-New Jersey
Medical School, Newark, he spent one year of residency training in general
surgery at Saint Agnes Hospital of Baltimore before completing a two-year
surgical oncology research fellowship at the Hospital of the University of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. He culminated his general surgery residency training
at Saint Mary’s Hospital, Waterbury, Conn., where he was chief resident for one
year, and then at Bridgeport Hospital in Bridgeport, Conn., serving a one-year
term there as administrative chief resident.
For the next several years, Dr. Roros was an attending surgeon at various
hospitals along the East Coast — most recently with Cherry Hill-based Associates
in General Surgery — before joining Monmouth Medical Center’s medical staff and
then being welcomed to the Specialty Hospital medical team. He has presented his
research before the Society of Surgical Oncologists and the American Association
for Cancer Research and during symposiums held by the University of Pennsylvania
Cancer Center. Additionally, his work has been published in The Journal of
Immunology.
PRANATHI MANDADI, M.D., OF LONG BRANCH, MEDICAL CARE DIRECTOR OF SPECIALTY
HOSPITAL AT KIMBALL, received her doctorate in medicine from Gandhi Medical
College, Hyderabad, India, where she also worked as a volunteer through national
programs that provided polio vaccinations to children and family planning
education to women in the rural areas of that region of the country. Upon her
arrival to the United States, she completed Monmouth Medical Center’s internal
medicine residency program in 2005 and has since become medical care director at
Specialty Hospital at Kimball.
After spending more than 20 years in various clinical and nursing management
positions at Monmouth Medical Center, DEBORAH SPERLING. R.N., M.S.N., APNC, OF
BRICK now serves as NURSE PRACTITIONER at both Specialty Hospitals, responsible
for stabilizing and managing acute and chronic illness for patients throughout
the integrative course of treatment.
Sperling earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in nursing at Seton Hall
University College of Nursing, South Orange, where she completed advanced
nursing studies to attain her certification as an adult/geriatric nurse
practitioner. She is a member of the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners.
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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.