MCW Otolaryngology and Communication Sciences Headlights Winter 2023 - A Message from the Chair
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
We have had a relatively mild winter here in Milwaukee and wishing for an early spring! We are excited to share the winter 2023 edition of our department newsletter with exciting news and updates about our faculty, learners, and staff.
In this edition, we are pleased and delighted to highlight our remarkable cadre of advanced practice providers (APPs). When I joined the MCW faculty in 1999, we had a small handful of APPs in the department with an early and evolving understanding of how best to incorporate these key members on our care teams. Present day, we have 12-14 APPs with skill sets of great breadth and depth that touch all the missions of our academic department – from inpatient to outpatient clinical care, research, education, campus leadership, and community outreach.
After long anticipation, we are now officially on the path to expanding our resident complement to 18 at full state (4-3-4-3-4) with our first cohort of 4/year joining us this summer! As we continue to grow, we have visions of increasing this complement further with consideration of additional fellowships – clinical and/or research – as our needs and strategy evolve.
In addition to the size of our department, our geographic reach and footprint is also growing as both partner healthcare systems continue to execute their statewide and regional growth plans. The core complex, tertiary clinical services will continue to reside at our Milwaukee main campus. However, we now have faculty and APPs outreaching to new satellites in different regions of state. We are also creating new and more integrated clinical partnerships with physicians and APPs in other parts of the state with overlays of virtual care, virtual consults, and other innovative methods to bring the best of academic medicine to new regions of Wisconsin.
With these larger regional initiatives, the department chair role is truly evolving into one of an “enterprise chair.” I am excited and bullish about our future as we work through many of the unanswered questions on the ideal model and balancing the many components – i.e., staying true to the core academic mission, providing the best, state-of-the-art care while minding the value proposition for our communities, and building trusting relationships with our professional colleagues in the distant communities.
On behalf of the department, we wish you good health and thank you for your ongoing support and kindness.
With warmest regards,
John Rhee, MD, MPH, MBA
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