North Fulton Hospital Kicks Off Acute Care Surgery Program in September

            It has been almost one month since the start of the acute care surgery program at North Fulton Hospital.  Since its launch at the beginning of September, the program, led by NFH general surgeons, has aided the hospital in providing patients with greater access to emergency surgical care.

            The acute care surgery program is led by Dr. Mark Gravlee, Dr. Mutinhima Moyo, and Dr. Mark Middleton.  These general surgeons will respond to all ER/Trauma Center call and all inpatient surgical consults, except where the patient or physician requests another surgeon.

            In the most basic analogy terms, a Surgicalist is to a Surgeon as a Hospitalist is to a Primary Care Physician. Often times, due to time constraints and busy schedules in their office, primary care physicians are unable to round on their patients who find themselves hospitalized.  When this is the case, hospitalists—who are physicians serving as primary care doctors in an inpatient, hospital setting—will take on this duty.  A surgicalist serves a similar function, providing acute surgical care when a patient comes into the hospital.

            This is a rapidly growing field in the healthcare industry for several reasons. The Surgicalist Program at NFH has been established to:

North Fulton is the first Tenet hospital to implement this program.  Some of the benefits will include:

• 24/7 coverage
• Full-time, on-site availability to coordinate care, which will improve quality, efficiency and patient satisfaction 
• Early input in the acute care process
• Better availability to see inpatient consults quickly
• Multiple rounds per day for critical patients
• Enhancement of NFH's recruitment/redirection efforts
• Increased capacity to provide outpatient general surgery to the community

We hope to increase the quality and service level delivered to our patients and our medical staff through this program. You may contact the surgeon on call for the group by calling 770-410-4661 or in the hospital you may reach them at extension 4441.  For more information about North Fulton Hospital’s many programs and service lines, please visit www.nfultonhospital.com.

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North Fulton Hospital (NFH), part of Tenet Georgia, is a 202-bed, acute-care hospital located on Highway 9, Alpharetta Highway, in Roswell.  Opened in 1983, NFH serves North Fulton and surrounding counties through its team of over 1000 employees, 400 staff physicians and 200 volunteers.  NFH is a state-designated Level II trauma center and provides a continuum of services through its centers and programs, including neurosciences, women’s health services, orthopedics, rehabilitation, surgical services, gastroenterology and oncology.  The hospital is fully accredited and also is certified as a Primary Stroke Center by the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, the nation’s oldest and largest hospital accreditation agency.