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March 12, 2018 Newsmakers

Dr. J. Kevin Shushtari | Chief Medical Officer | Hospital for Special Care

Dr. J. Kevin Shushtari
By John Stearns

Dr. J. Kevin Shushtari knew the moment he walked into the Hospital for Special Care (HSC), a long-term acute care hospital in New Britain, that it was “a remarkable place.”

Shushtari became chief medical officer Jan. 1 after working at Sarasota (Fla.) Memorial Health Care System as executive medical director of post-acute services, in which he has extensive experience.

“The culture here is one of caring, and the hospital is true to its mission to serve the community where healthcare needs are greatest,” said Shushtari, who oversees all medical staff, but, importantly, still gets to spend about 30 percent of his time bedside.

Shushtari's background includes starting the hospitalist program at Springfield's Mercy Medical Center in 1993. Mercy pioneered hospitalist medicine, the fastest-growing specialty ever in U.S. medicine, he said. Hospitalist docs work only in hospitals to improve efficiency and care.

Shustari also co-founded the country's first online pharmacy, Rx.com, in 1997, to create a medical information site to look up healthcare issues. The pharmacy side of Rx.com paid for the “exorbitantly expensive” task of creating original medical content, he said, calling it a “daunting task” to create such a company in the internet's early days.

What is now Walgreens Boots Alliance acquired Rx.com.

What's your biggest opportunity at HSC?

To help sustain HSC's mission of rebuilding lives in core areas of expertise and provide new, innovative programs. Areas of particular interest to me are Autism Spectrum Disorders, Alzheimer's disease and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. There is a growing need for diagnosis and treatment in these areas.

What's the biggest challenge facing HSC?

Reimbursement rates do not keep pace with cost of delivering care and the need for care continues to grow. Our ability to improve overall quality of care through cost-efficient approaches has never been more critical.

Tell us something about you many people don't know.

I recently earned a Master in Fine Arts in fiction from Boston University and have published numerous short stories. I'm completing my first novel.

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