The Exec: New Phoenix Children's Physician-in-Chief Has History of Excellence

Ashish Patel plans to translate his success in growing Phoenix Children's gastroenterology program into the physician-in-chief role.

The new physician-in-chief of Phoenix Children's earned the role based on his performance as division chief of gastroenterology at the pediatric health system.

Ashish Patel, MD, became division chief of gastroenterology at Phoenix Children's in April 2020. His prior leadership experience includes serving as associate clinical director of the pediatric gastroenterology program at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and director of the Southwestern Pediatric Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center at Children's Medical Center Dallas.

As division chief of gastroenterology, Patel says he pursued a program of excellence based on three pillars: clinical excellence, opportunities for research, and education and community outreach.

Clinical excellence

Patel promoted clinical excellence in the gastroenterology division by recruiting several new physicians. They were needed because of massive growth in the Phoenix area and growth of the health system.

"With a commitment to growth, the first thing we needed to do was to build on Phoenix Children's clinical excellence, and the way you do that is through recruiting excellent physicians," he says.

Patel recruited 10 new pediatric gastroenterologists, increasing the number of faculty positions in that area to 25. He also recruited two transplant-trained hepatologists and a pediatrics-trained liver and kidney surgeon.

In addition to addressing growth in the patient population, Patel's recruitment of new physicians was designed to fill gaps in the kind of care that Phoenix Children's provided. For example, there was no gastrointestinal motility program at the health system and there were no facilities in the state providing that service.

"We had to send patients to Texas to get motility studies done," Patel says. "I recruited a doctor from UT Southwestern to set up the motility program. He was among my first set of recruits. That allowed us to establish that we were in a growth phase, and people across the country saw that, which helped to boost recruitment."

There is a physician shortage in many specialties in the United States, but Patel was able to recruit physicians by leveraging his relationships and the growth opportunities at Phoenix Children's.

"One of the doctors we recruited was my first pediatric resident at UT Southwestern," he says. "Another doctor we recruited was one of my fellows at UT Southwestern. I talked with doctors about the vision and the opportunity at Phoenix Children's."

Ashish Patel, MD, is physician-in-chief of Phoenix Children's. Photo courtesy of Phoenix Children's.

Opportunities for Research

Patel says he learned the value of research at healthcare organizations from his time at UT Southwestern, an institution steeped in research.

"When I came to Phoenix Children's, I knew that the way we could build a national reputation was by being involved in research and being involved in efforts such as consortiums and collaborations," he says.

In 2020, research at Phoenix Children's was limited to a handful of industry-based studies that brought novel therapeutics to the pediatric population.

"What we wanted to do is add investigator-initiated studies that would advance science, medicine, and therapeutics," Patel says. "We have launched these kinds of studies in areas such as inflammatory bowel disease and feeding disorders."

An innovative area of research at Phoenix Children's is transnasal endoscopy, which does not require general anesthesia. Phoenix Children's and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia are national leaders in pediatric transnasal endoscopy.

"Transnasal endoscopy has benefits for children because they can avoid general anesthesia," Patel says. "It has benefits for the healthcare system in off-loading surgical caseload."

Education and community outreach

In 2020, Phoenix Children's had the largest pediatric gastroenterology program in the country that did not train future gastroenterologists. Creating a fellowship program was among Patel's top priorities, and a program was launched in 2021.

The goal was to create one of the best pediatric gastroenterology fellowship programs in the country, Patel says.

"When the core group sat down to plan for the fellowship program, we talked about what we loved about our fellowship experiences and what we thought could be done better," he says. "We wanted to achieve the perfect intersection of those things."

In the first year of interviewing fellows, candidates were told that the program offered an excellent clinical foundation, with opportunities for research, Patel says.

"Fellows would leave the program feeling comfortable in taking care of pediatric gastroenterology patients in multiple subspecialties," he says. "We also wanted to give fellows experiences in research—curriculum development, basic science research, clinical research, and quality improvement."

The gastroenterology fellowship program has been a success, Patel says.

"We have matched with fellows in each of the three years that the program has been open," he says. "In the past year, we recruited two fellows from our own residency program."

Since 2020, Phoenix Children's has launched several gastroenterology community outreach programs.

"Phoenix Children's foundation does amazing outreach throughout the Phoenix area," Patel says. "We have piggybacked on their resources to go out into the community to engage with families. We have created a Gastrointestinal Advisory Board, where we have asked families to advocate for what they feel is important in the GI field."

For example, this month an inflammatory bowel disease support group will meet at Phoenix Children's, Patel says.

"We will have an evening event where families can get some education, exposure to the research we are doing, and exposure to the support services that we have for our patients," he says.

Applying division chief success in the physician-in-chief role

Patel is eager to translate his division chief success to his new role.

"Now, my job is to take what I learned in growing the gastroenterology division over the past four years and take the approach of developing a vision, emphasizing mentorship and education, and promoting research at the 20 medical divisions at Phoenix Children's," he says. "I am going to be interacting with colleagues at the division-chief level."

Patel also plans to interact with the clinical staff.

"I want to attend their monthly faculty meetings, and I want to find out about their struggles," he says.

Two areas on which he focused as chief of gastroenterology are going to be particularly helpful in the physician-in-chief role, Patel says.

"I want to talk with the division chiefs about faculty outreach and recruiting," he says. "I want to help engage physicians and optimize recruiting."