2018-2019 Linde Fellows

Aditya Chandrasekhar, MD, MPH

Lead Physician, Fenway Health

Dr. Chandrasekhar plans to work on strategies to improve patient access at Fenway Health. As the practice continues to rapidly expand, patients face increased wait times for available appointments. He hopes to address this issue by developing sustainable alternative models for high demand services like screening for sexually transmitted diseases and pre-exposure prophylaxis against HIV. He will help pilot nurse driven clinic visits and explore better triage and scheduling practices to help improve patient access.

Dr. Chandrasekhar earned his medical degree at Grant Medical College in Mumbai, India. Following medical school, he obtained a Master's in Public Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, before completing his residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Since graduating residency in 2014, he has practiced as a primary care physician at Fenway Health. Since 2016, he has served as a Lead Physician at Fenway Health and splits his time between providing direct patient care and managing floor operations.

Leonor Fernandez, MD

Director of Patient Engagement, Healthcare Associates

Dr. Fernandez will be developing a model for enhancing the quality and experience of care for patients with limited English proficiency (LEP) at Healthcare Associates (HCA). She will outline and develop strategies that promote effective and humane care and communication across language barriers for all patients. Her project will explore current care for linguistic minorities and identify key indicators of quality that need attention. She will first gather data and feedback and identify specific needs of HCA LEP patients. She will then define and advance practice norms and help build organizational knowledge, culture and resources that promote respectful, high quality care for patients with LEP at HCA.

Dr. Fernandez is an educator, former Associate Firm Chief for Tullis Medicine Firm, and Rabkin Medical Education Fellow. She has led local and national CME conferences on Health Disparities, on the care of Immigrants and patients with limited English, and on the role of implicit bias and cultural competence in health care. She directs Patient Engagement at Healthcare Associates and is a researcher with OpenNotes, where she studies the effect of shared notes, trust and transparency in health care. She is a primary care doctor for diverse group of patients at HCA.

Daniele Ölveczky, MD, MS

Officer of Inclusion, Department of Internal Medicine

Dr. Ölveczky will work with Healthcare Associates (HCA) to integrate inclusion and diversity principles into HCA’s strategic plan, which focuses on four key areas; fiscal responsibility, quality of care, staff/provider wellness and patient engagement. As a Linde fellow, Dr. Ölveczky will examine the projects underway in these areas, ensuring that they incorporate principles of multiculturalism and inclusion.

Dr. Ölveczky attended Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine where she obtained an MD and a Masters degree in neuroscience. She completed her residency at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center followed by a geriatrics fellowship at BIDMC and BWH. She is currently a hospitalist at BIDMC, where she works primarily as a nocturnist. As Co-chair of the HMS Academy Cross Cultural Interest Goup, she has led faculty development workshops at the HMS Academy about the importance of diversity and the Hidden Curriculum in medical education, as well as negotiating racism at the bedside, which was the highest attended workshop in the history of the Academy. She will complete her HMS Miles Shore and HMS Academy Fellowships this year during which she studied how to standardize the incorporation of race, religion, gender, sexual preference and ethnicity into undergraduate medical education curricula. She has been named the inaugural Officer of Inclusion for the Department of Internal Medicine.

Yamini Saravanan, MD, MHS

Medicine Clerkship Director, Cambridge Integrated Clerkship, Cambridge Health Alliance

Dr. Saravanan plans to improve care for patients with opiate addiction at Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA). Her project will seek to understand and address the current barriers to prescribing buprenorphine by primary care providers at CHA. She will pilot a team-based approach to buprenorphine prescribing in primary care, with behavioral health teams nested in primary care to better address the complex care needs of these patients. There is much variation among primary care sites in the number of buprenorphine prescribers, and services offered to patients with opiate addiction. This proposal seeks to identify the perceived challenges of providers in prescribing buprenorphine, and pilot a process of identifying and managing patients appropriate for buprenorphine treatment in primary care by engaging our behavioral health team.

Dr. Saravanan earned her medical degree at the George Washington University School of Medicine. Preceding medical school, she got a Masters in Health Sciences from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, and worked for the World Health Organization in Washington DC. She completed her residency in Internal Medicine in 2007 from the Cambridge Health Alliance, and has worked at the Primary Care Center at CHA. Dr. Saravanan completed the Academy Fellowship at HMS and developed a curriculum for third year resident in leading Shared Medical Appointments for patients with Diabetes Mellitus. Dr. Saravanan also completed the Innovation Fellowship through the Center of Primary Care and explored the patient factors, through patient narratives, contributing to Emergency Department over-utilization. Dr. Saravanan is interested in bridging Health Systems Improvement with Medical Education. She currently is the Medicine Clerkship Director for the Cambridge Integrated Clerkship.