Ask each of the seven doctors who head up the five centers of excellence at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian why they stick with the Newport Beach facility and they’ll list the other doctors, nurses and staff that work together as a team.
They’ll also cite Hoag’s openness to innovation and to spending in order to maintain the best possible patient care and research possible.
And the buck stops with Dr. Richard Afable, the hospital’s president and chief executive officer.
The man who said his getting into medicine was the result of a series of accidents, attributes his and the hospital’s successes to the surrounding community and to Hoag’s doctors and staff. He’s just there to help.
“My job, my commitment is to empower people and assist them in doing their work,” he said, sitting in his Hoag office. “It’s support. While I may have the accountability, I have none of the responsibility for caring for individual patients, I make sure those who are have what they need.”
Afable, 53, was charged with overseeing the $1-billion expansion project at the hospital. He led Hoag staff as they and local residents watched the Sue and Bill Gross Women’s Pavilion open a year ago and as the Heart & Vascular Institute was recognized this year as Hoag’s fifth center of excellence. He manages the Heart & Vascular Institute, the Cancer Center, Orthopedic Services and the Women’s Health Services Center, which are all growing and diversifying their patient care.
The Heart & Vascular Institute executive committee, which includes three other doctors, is being spearheaded by Dr. Michael Brant-Zawadzki, 57. The medical director originally wanted to be a cardiologist but, after realizing he was more drawn to interactive intervention and working with his hands, decided to become a radiologist. Brant-Zawadzki —everyone at the hospital calls him “BZ” — was recruited to the hospital after helping develop magnetic resonance imaging technology while serving as a professor at UC San Francisco.
The cool “toys” he gets to work with are an added perk. And that perk extends to patients as better technology is developed and used at the hospital for more minimally invasive techniques. A new building is set to be built on the lower campus adjacent to the Hoag Cancer Center where the Kathryn C. Fishback Child Care Center stands today.
Joining the Neuroscience Institute in top-notch care is the Hoag Cancer Center, which is the largest such program in Southern California outside Los Angeles. Dr. Robert Dillman has led the department since 1989. The present facility opened in 1991.
It was almost predestined Dillman, 59, would go into medicine with a doctor for dad and a nurse for a mom. He got his first glimpse of cancer when his mother was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Disease when he was young.
During his leadership, Dillman has seen survival rates of Hoag cancer patients more than double since the early 1990s, which he attributes to earlier diagnosis and new technology and therapies employed by Hoag doctors.
“I like what I do and I like what the results have been. . . . People see we’re trying to do something better for area residents, and it’s very gratifying,” he said.
The hospital took the double-team approach with the Hoag Heart & Vascular Institute, employing Dr. Richard Haskell and Dr. Aidan Raney.
Raney, who serves as the medical director of cardiac surgery and said his real passion lies in heart surgery, joined Hoag’s blossoming cardiac surgical team in 1987. He watched Hoag’s heart transplant program start and stop and will bear witness to a new facility being opened for the center, yet another part of Hoag’s expansion.
Haskell witnessed the beginning of angioplasty and the explosion of new technology and medicines in his field, something that excited him about cardiology. He was one of the few doctors who was trained to perform angioplasties and joined Hoag, like many of the doctors, because the staff was willing to stay on top of new and innovational developments. Although he said he enjoys being a part of the decision-making at Hoag, his real love, like many doctors, is in patient care.
“I think when you deal with a patient and you make them better, they’re always grateful, the family is very grateful, and they appreciate the care they get when somebody helps them through rough patch in life,” he said. “It’s very nice to see them flourish and do well. . . . It’s satisfying to take care of people for a long time, that’s one advantage of cardiology, of 10 your patient is with you for a long time.”
Advancements in the area of women’s health have been a longtime coming, or so thinks Dr. Vivian Dickerson, the woman at the helm of the Women’s Health Services center.
Dickerson served in the Peace Corps, where she was inspired to be involved in women’s health after witnessing a baby being born in an African village without the advantage of electricity or running water.
While a professor at UC Irvine’s School of Medicine, she developed business plans for a center devoted to the well-being of her gender. She plans on focusing care not only on treatment and diagnosis of traditional women’s medical issues, but on the healing process.
“Women’s health is an entire spectrum of care, it’s not just about reproductive organs and theirreproductive lives,” she said in her office in the Women’s Pavilion.
She plans on integrating other specialty areas into women’s care, seeing more patients in the wellness center, as well as adding programs to fill in the gaps she sees.
Orange County needed a comprehensive orthopedic center and Hoag, which now touts its Orthopedic Services center as the highest-volume program in Orange County, filled the niche.
Dr. James Caillouette heads up the largest orthopedic staff in the area. Caillouette was an innovator, like many Hoag doctors, and developed a system of ultrasonic tools for revision joint replacement surgery that is now used at more than 600 medical centers all over the world.
Known for its Institute for Spine and JointWorks, its total joint program, Hoag is trying to get its patients out and about again so they can lead full and healthy lives without pain.
“These physicians are the leaders of this hospital and are at the top of their field,” Afable said. “They could be working anywhere but they see this as the place to do their work in a way to provide the best patient care. They choose Hoag, and we’re fortunate.”
As president of Hoag Hospital, Dr. Richard Afable leads its talented team.
Robert Dillman
Richard Haskell
Aidan Raney
Vivian Dickerson
James Caillouette
