Frolkis Begins as Director of Primary Care
Joseph Frolkis, MD, PhD, who has held leadership positions in preventive cardiology, primary care and hospital administration during the last 25 years, began as director of Primary Care and associate chief of General Medicine for BWH in the Department of Medicine in October.
Frolkis is responsible for ensuring that all aspects of BWH primary care practices continue to provide quality, comprehensive care to their patients, and he will also practice primary care at BWH. He will be involved in issues related to the recruitment, retention and mentoring of physicians who choose general internal medicine and primary care as a specialty focus, and continue the ongoing efforts at BWH and Partners to address issues relative to the shortage of primary care physicians and growing demand for their services.
“With the early promise of health care reform in Massachusetts and efforts to reform health care nationally, this finally might be primary care’s time,” Frolkis said. “There’s a real urgency here at BWH and Partners, across the state and now in Congress.”
Frolkis is getting acquainted with BWH’s 12 primary care practices which are spread across 15 sites, including the BWH/Mass. General Ambulatory Care Center where the primary care practice is incorporating elements of the patient-centered medical home concept into practice. BWH is poised to pursue opportunities for additional demonstration projects to evaluate practices as funding may become available from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
“It’s exciting to work at Brigham and Women’s Hospital where there are so many exceptionally smart and talented people who are passionate about what they do,” he said.
Frolkis graduated from Case Western University School of Medicine, and he completed his residency at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Cleveland. Prior to medical school, he completed his doctorate in clinical psychology at Boston University. Previously, he served as chief of Primary Care at the Mount Sinai Medical Center, as the chief of the Division of General Medicine, Geriatrics, and Health Care Research at University Hospitals in Cleveland, and as director of Clinical Operations for the Section of Preventive Cardiology and Cardiac Rehabilitation in the Cleveland Clinic Foundation’s Department of Cardiology. He also served as associate professor of Medicine and of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.
Most recently, Frolkis served as president and CEO of New Milford Hospital in New Milford, Conn., which is a not-for-profit, 85-bed full-service community hospital that is a member of the NewYork-Presbyterian Healthcare System, which serves Connecticut, New York and New Jersey.
Stuart Mushlin, MD, had served as the interim director for Primary Care over the past year following the departure of Robert Goldszer, MD, MBA, in April 2008.
“Please join us in welcoming and congratulating Dr. Frolkis in his new role at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the Department of Medicine and the Division of General Medicine, and in thanking Dr. Mushlin for his thoughtful and skillful leadership of Primary Care during the past year,” said Joseph Loscalzo, MD, PhD, chairman of the Department of Medicine.