AleksanderFeoktistovMDMBA

Summary

• I am a physician practicing Rheumatology for 20+ years. There were challenges, and if you want to know about them, keep reading.
  
  Foremost, I am deeply indebted to Dr. Steven Abramson, Chief of Rheumatology at NYU who entrusted in me, who sponsored me for H1 visa and a Green card, and hired me to work in the lab in signal transduction. He was my mentor in Rheumatology fellowship as well.
  
  Jumping forward, I had been a very successful solo private practitioner in Massachusetts. I’ve learned MSK Ultrasound to address needs of the community with lack of adequate imaging services and practiced it when few and far between Rheumatologists used that. Thanks to Dr. McAlindon, Chief of Rheumatology, Tufts University, I was invited to teach it, which I did pro bono.
  
  I did have an exposure to corporate medicine for three years after being squeezed out from private practice. During that time I earned my MBA in competitive program, and wanted to quit Medicine, since corporate medicine, at least how it was practiced in Mass was not aligning with me as a caring physician. I was balancing between being financial adviser to physicians or joining “Doctors without borders” to take care of poor underserved populations. The latter was more appealing.
  
  A few weeks after graduation (my son and I graduated the same time) I’ve got a call from Dr. Ginzler (Downstate NY, Chief of Rheumatology) who asked if I’d be interested in working in community hospital in Brooklyn taking care of underserved population. Suddenly, the dream came true.
  
  Since then, for the last five years I am a Chief of Rheumatology at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn. From 0.8 FTE being Jack of all in- and out-patient trades I built up a Division.
  
  I love my job!
  
  I am proud of my Division providing expert Rheumatology care for racially diverse underserved population. We started research projects to address our population which is underrepresented in clinical trials.