2019-2020 Linde Fellows
Erica Mintzer, MD
Medical Director, Malden Family Medicine Center
Dr. Erica Mintzer is the incoming Medical Director for Malden Family Medicine Center, which is Cambridge Health Alliance’s largest primary care site. Dr. Mintzer aims to achieve the ACO quality measure for early entry into prenatal care by enhancing preconception planning in primary care. She will establish One Key Question (“Would you like to become pregnant in the next year?”) as a previsit screening tool at Malden and then share this practice with other CHA primary care sites. Dr. Mintzer received a BA in Latin American Literature from Dartmouth College and then worked for three years at Tellus Institute, an environmental think tank. She graduated from Yale School of Medicine and Boston University Family Medicine Residency. Since 2012, she has practiced primary care at Codman Square Health Center and labor and delivery at Boston Medical Center. At Codman, she assumed the roles of Perinatal Provider Champion and Family Medicine Department Director.
Elizabeth Nilson, MD, MPH, FACP
Director for Complex Care Communication in General Medicine, Lahey Hospital and Medical Center
Dr. Elizabeth Nilson is the Director for Complex Care Communication in General Medicine at Lahey Hospital and Medical Center. Dr. Nilson’s project will integrate Ariadne’s “Serious Illness Conversation Guide” into the general medicine group at Lahey Hospital and Medical Center as part of a larger institution-wide initiative. This will include training providers in advanced communication skills training and use of the guide, identification of a work-flow to schedule high risk patients with their primary care provider for the conversation and the construction of a method for primary care providers to work collaboratively with subspecialty colleagues around aspects of advancing illness like prognosis, side effects, burdens of potential treatments and integrating patient goals and wishes into the care plan.
Dr. Nilson went to medical school at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, trained in internal medicine at NY Presbyterian - Weill Cornell Medical Center, served as chief resident at NY Downtown Hospital and completed the certificate program in Clinical Ethics Consultation through the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the Preventive Medicine Residency at NY Presbyterian-Cornell and Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health and the Partners/Harvard Palliative Care Education and Practice course. She worked at an ethics consultant and general internist at NY Presbyterian-Cornell prior to coming to Lahey in 2009. She is vice-chair for Ethics at Lahey, and has been the Residency Director of the Internal Medicine Program at Lahey since 2010.
Elizabeth Norian, MD
Medical Director of the Resident Clinic and Assistant Medical Director, Healthcare Associates
Dr. Elizabeth Norian is a 2008 graduate of The George Washington School of Medicine and Health Sciences. She completed her training in Internal Medicine in 2011 at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) where she was a participant in the Primary Care Track and the Clinician Educator Track. Following residency, Dr. Norian served as Primary Care Chief Medical Resident at BIDMC where she developed a curriculum on Chronic Disease Management, still in use today. After her chief year, Dr. Norian moved to the Veteran’s Affairs Hospital (VA) in West Roxbury, Boston, MA in the Primary Care Service Line. There, she cared for Boston’s veterans and served as the Director of Medical Student Ambulatory Education. At the VA, Dr. Norian partnered with educators at Boston University School of Medicine and ultimately served as Assistant Clerkship Director of the Advanced Ambulatory Care Clerkship there. While in this position, she developed a VA-specific didactic curriculum to expand students’ understanding of issues that veterans face including PTSD and Military Sexual Trauma. Dr. Norian returned to BIDMC in 2017 when she took the dual position of Medical Director of the Resident Clinic at Healthcare Associates (HCA) and as an Assistant Medical Director of HCA at large. In this current position, Dr. Norian has worked with residency and practice leadership to integrate fully the resident practice into that of HCA. In her first year, she developed a monthly Preceptor Team Meeting, and this past year, Dr. Norian developed and implemented the Preceptor 360 Evaluation. Her work as a voice for both the residents and the practice has codified her understanding of the importance of communication and continuity for patients.
Dr. Norian’s Linde project seeks to improve the care team’s communication and continuity with their patients. Current literature shows the importance of continuity of care for patients with their care team. Patients with better continuity have better health outcomes, incur lower costs and report greater satisfaction with their care. Dr. Norian will first evaluate HCA’s current state of continuity for specific patient groups, including those that benefit the most from continuity including the elderly and the medically complex. Additional work will be done to determine rates of continuity for specific physician groups, such as low or high session providers. Following this evaluation, a system to improve communication between care team members will be designed with the aim to improve continuity of care within the care team.
Sarah Shelby Etherton, MD
Lead Physician, Fenway Health
Dr. Shelby Etherton plans to create a “Wellness and Provider Satisfaction Program” at Fenway Health as her project for the Linde Fellowship. By improving provider wellness and job satisfaction through this new program, Fenway would hopefully improve quality of life for providers, improve the sense of community and support and prevent staff turnover. Furthermore, with improved provider happiness and satisfaction, Fenway Health might also expect better patient outcomes and improved patient satisfaction.
Dr. Shelby Etherton earned her medical degree at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, TX. Following medical school, she completed her residency in Internal Medicine at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose, CA. After finishing residency in 2011, she practiced as a primary care physician for two years at the University of Texas’s HIV Clinic in Dallas, then in 2013 moved to Boston and began work at Fenway Health. At Fenway Health she is a primary care doctor with additional training in HIV medicine, transgender care and the treatment of opioid use disorder with buprenorphine. Since 2017, she has served as a Lead Physician at Fenway Health and divides her time between providing direct patient care and managing floor operations for the Internal Medicine side of the South End Fenway Health location.