Allegheny Health Network: Combining Infectious Disease With Critical Care Medicine

We are continuing our new series, Media Day, where we spotlight individual medical institutions and infectious disease (ID) programs. Today, we spotlight the Allegheny Health Network (AHN) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

AHN’s Nitin Bhanot, MD, is division chief and the program director of the infectious disease fellowship program and he says one of the unique aspects of the AHN program is that they combine their infectious disease fellowship with critical care medicine.

“There's some commonalities between these two disciplines…both deal with multiple organ systems amongst our patients, and so we thought it would be unique to provide that synergistic combination where the thought process and cerebral field of infectious disease, combined with procedural skill sets that our critical care medicine physicians have,” Bhanot said. “A lot of patients are in the ICU with infections with sepsis and septic shock, and are on antibiotics...who else but an ID physician and a critical care physician to be able to manage these patients,” Bhanot said.

AHN has a relationship with Lake Erie College of Medicine, Drexel University’s School of Medicine, and Duquesne University. Medical students visit AHN for clinical rotations from Drexel.

Bhanot says AHN’s fellows and trainees get involved in a number of areas.

“We do research in clinical infectious disease, infection prevention, and stewardship—and not just the faculty. We involve our trainees across all levels to be involved in this so that they can also learn how to do QI [quality improvement] projects, how to do research that benefit our patients, which is really the goal of the organization.

Allegheny General Hospital, which is the flagship hospital of AHN, has been recognized as a center of excellence by the Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA). Bhanot explains its based in antimicrobial stewardship. He says they have to meet certain metrics. And then IDSA analyzes reviews the projects the institutions are doing. After that analysis and detailed review, IDSA offers that accreditation, explains Bhanot.

Look for the next episode on Monday where Cassandra Oehler, MD, talks about HIV clinical care at AHN, ongoing research around this subject, and how they are using long-acting injectables.