department of medicine

Message from Joel Richter, MD, FACP, MACG

Chairperson, Department of Medicine

Professor, Medicine

As I complete my first three years as Chairman of the Department of Medicine, I am confident that the Department is doing well. We have an excellent faculty and they continue to excel in all three domains of academia – clinical care, education and research.

The last year saw 10 faculty members join the Department of Medicine, giving us 89 full-time faculty, and 17 emeritus or part-time faculty. We recruited from the University of Pennsylvania Dr. Mike Madaio, who is our new Section Chief of Nephrology, as well as Dr. Gary Foster, who is coordinating our NIH Center for Obesity Research and Education (CORE). We are also finalizing our search for section heads in Endocrinology and Rheumatology. In the last year, our Section of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine was recognized as the 28th best program in the country by US News and World Report, as well as a JCHAO Center of Excellence designated for Lung Volume Reduction Surgery. Our Hospital Medicine program has been strengthened in a joint venture with the for-profit group, Cogent Healthcare. Under the leadership of Dr. Bill Ford, this group now has nearly 25 hospitalists managing patients on the inpatient service, teaching our residents, co-managing several surgical services, and they recently introduced a new 23-hour short-stay observation unit. In 2006, Dr. Bennett Lorber retired as Section Chief of Infectious Disease after 26 years, and Dr. Tom Fekete was appointed the new Section Chief.

The Department of Medicine continues to expand our facilities so that we can see our patients in the most state-of-the-art environment. The old Skin and Cancer Center has been totally refurbished and it now serves as a multi-specialty clinic for patients from Nephrology, Kidney Transplantation, Family Practice, Endocrinology, and Rheumatology. Late this fall, the Temple Lung Center will move into a spacious one-of-its-kind facility on the 5th floor of the Ambulatory Care Center. Though a small Department of Medicine faculty, 16 physicians (18% of the faculty) were recognized as Best Doctors in America 2005-2006, and four were in Philadelphia Magazine’s Top Doctors in 2006-2007 (Drs. Bove, Lorber, Madaio and Richter).

A common theme in the Department of Medicine’s faculty is their passion and excellence in teaching. Many are active in all aspects of medical school teaching. The housestaff consistently recognize nearly all the faculty each year with at least one outstanding teaching designation.

The “crown jewel” of the Department is our Medicine Residency Program, comprised of 96 categorical residents. The group has great diversity, consisting of 58 men, 38 women, 43 minority residents and 11 IMG residents. Our first time pass rate for the ABIM is 97% over the past 3 years and 100% overall. Approximately 80% of the housestaff enter subspecialty fellowships. In the fall of 2006, under the leadership of Dr. Darilyn Moyer, we completed a successful ACGME RRC review of the Internal Medicine residency and fellowship programs. The residency program received continued accreditation for four years, and five year accreditation was received for several of our subspecialty fellowships, including Infectious Disease, Cardiology, Gastroenterology, Hematology/Oncology and Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine.

In 2006, the Temple Department of Medicine ranked 83rd in NIH funding for medicine departments. Over the last three years, overall research dollars have increased 23%: 5% in NIH grants, 40% in other grants especially tobacco monies, and 58% in pharmaceutical grants. New grants include our NIH CORE obesity center under the direction of Gary Foster, PhD, a new DOH Tobacco Formula Grant on obesity and diabetes to Drs. Boden and Foster and a K23 NIH Career Development Grant to Dr. Anu Parajape, who recently joined us from Emory University. The Department faculty members have been active in research publications. As a group, they published 254 articles, chapters or editorials, up 54% from year 2005.

The Department is beginning our third year of a program to promote clinical/basic research by junior faculty members – the Temple Department of Medicine Faculty Development Research Award. This program provides the awardees with 50% protected time for research over two years and $150,000 salary support. To date, seven grants have been awarded thorough philanthropic monies supported by the Evans Family Foundation, AstraZeneca Pharmaceutical and Novartis Pharmaceutical. Dr. Frank Friedenberg, who received one of the first awards in 2005, earned a Masters in Clinical Epidemiology from Temple University. Another awardee, Dr. Sam Chatilla, recently received a very positive score on his NIH K08 Award.

As I begin my next three years as Chairman of the Department of Medicine, there is a great deal of excitement about the coming years. A major emphasis will be the recruitment of NIH scientists to help fill the laboratories in the new School of Medicine building to open in November 2009. Areas of research focus in the Department of Medicine will center around cardiovascular diseases, pulmonary diseases and inflammation, GI motility disorders, thrombosis, autoimmune diseases, obesity, and health services research in underserved minorities. We need to recruit at least 15 to 20 basic and clinical scientists if the Department of Medicine is to show substantial improvement in our NIH rankings. Likewise, our Department of Medicine is relatively small, and we must grow substantially in number to meet the increasing educational needs and clinical requirements to improve our payor mix. To accomplish this, we may need to recruit 25 to 35 physicians over the next five years and grow our clinical enterprise, both on the main campus and also at Jeanes Hospital and selective outlying practice sites in the region. These are exciting times for the Department of Medicine, and we’re certainly in an invigorating growth spurt. In the upcoming years, we have many challenges, but I am optimistic that working together we will continue to grow and improve Temple University and its Department of Medicine.

Sincerely,

Joel Richter, MD, FACP, MACG

Professor of Medicine

The Richard L. Evans Chair, Department of Medicine