New Physician Council Announced at Annual Meeting

This year’s medical staff annual meeting took place on Monday, December 13. A business meeting was followed by a keynote presentation by Judah Folkman, MD, director of the Vascular Biology Program and surgeon-in-chief emeritus at Children’s Hospital, and Andrus Professor of Pediatric Surgery and Professor of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School.

A critical part of the business meeting was the announcement of a new, joint BWH/BWPO Physician Council comprised of 18 elected representatives from the medical staff that would replace and serve the function of the current medical staff officers. A vote was taken to amend the Medical Staff Bylaws to incorporate the council’s creation. The amendment passed and the Physicians’ Council will now assemble to unite the hospital’s medical staff officers and the BWPO Physicians Worklife Committee.

“We believe the new council will allow for better representation of all departments of the hospital, eliminate redundancy in the scope of activities and allow for representative stewardship of our funds,” said Andy Whittemore, MD, when presenting the Bylaws change at the meeting.

Folkman, highly regarded for his discoveries related to angiogenesis, presented “Lessons Learned from Translating Laboratory Discoveries to the Clinic.” BWH Ethics Committee co-sponsored his keynote presentation.

Following Folkman’s powerful presentation, the crowd in the Bornstein Amphitheater then retired to the Cabot Atrium for a reception to celebrate another successful year for physicians at BWH.