The Department of Medicine is pleased to announce that Dr. Belinda E. Ostrowsky has been appointed Director of Epidemiology, Stewardship, and Infection Prevention, and Dr. Priya Nori has been appointed Medical Director of the Antibiotic Stewardship Program (ASP).
In this role, Dr. Ostrowsky will act as the healthcare epidemiologist for Montefiore Health System, overseeing surveillance and reporting of healthcare-associated infections alongside Audrey Adams, RN, MPH, CIC, and her team of infection preventionists. Dr. Ostrowsky will serve as unified director of Antimicrobial Stewardship and Infection Prevention and Control. Working with Patient Safety, Performance Improvement, and Quality, she will lead the charge in meeting the expanding needs of our complex healthcare climate.
Dr. Nori, who was previously Director of the Montefiore Einstein Antibiotic Stewardship Program at the Wakefield campus, will assume the role of Medical Director of the ASP, overseeing operations at the Moses, Einstein, and Wakefield campuses. She will continue to lead ASP and infectious diseases educational initiatives throughout the health system. Along with Dr. Ostrowsky, Dr. Iona Munjal (ASP Director, CHAM), and ID pharmacy managers Dr. Yi Guo, Dr. Phil Chung, and Dr. Phil Lee, Dr. Nori will extend stewardship activities to Montefiore’s vast ambulatory network.
"Both Drs. Ostrowsky and Nori have served as an integral part of Montefiore’s outstanding response efforts to emerging infections such as Ebola and Legionella, and we congratulate them both on their new roles at Montefiore Einstein," said Dr. Yaron Tomer, Chair of the Department of Medicine.
The Montefiore ASP was launched in July 2008 at the Moses and Weiler campuses and expanded to Wakefield and the Children's Hospital at Montefiore in 2013. The multidisciplinary ASP team promotes judicious antimicrobial prescribing to improve patient outcomes, avert adverse events such as C. difficile infections, and stem ongoing antibiotic resistance. Some novel ASP programs include decision-support tools adapted from national guidelines and tailored to local microbiology, and smartphone prescribing apps for prescribers at all levels. The ASP is a multidisciplinary effort with strong support from the Department of Medicine and from our institutional leadership. Our ASP has shown a significant increase in appropriateness of antibiotic prescriptions and reductions in the volume of antimicrobial use, C. difficile rates, and antibiotic resistance. The ASP recently received funding from the United Hospital Fund to pilot ASP in the adult ambulatory setting along with family medicine and internal medicine champions.
Dr. Ostrowsky is Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine (Infectious Diseases). She completed a medical degree at SUNY Stony Brook, internal medicine residency at the Mayo Clinic, and an infectious diseases fellowship at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She received an MPH from Harvard School of Public Health and served as an Epidemiology Intelligence Officer for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She is a fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) and the Society for Healthcare Epidemiologists of America (SHEA). Together with her team, Dr. Ostrowsky developed a program that has been recognized as a leading model locally, regionally, and nationally. In 2010-2013, she led a CDC/AHRQ study on the impact of ASP on C. difficile infections. She is on the planning committee for the 2016 SHEA national meeting and will co-chair the 2017 meeting.
Dr. Nori is Assistant Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases). She is an alumna of Johns Hopkins University and Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where she was Alpha Omega Alpha and a recipient of the AMWA Glasgow-Rubin Achievement Award. She completed her internship at Baylor College of Medicine, residency at New York Presbyterian Hospital, and returned to Montefiore Einstein for fellowship in infectious diseases. As Director of the Montefiore Einstein Antibiotic Stewardship Program at Wakefield, she implemented programs and policies to improve prescribing, reduce antibiotic consumption, and improve patient outcomes such as length of stay. Together with Dr. Theresa Madaline, she also helped to develop the Montefiore outpatient parenteral antibiotic therapy (OPAT) program, a transitional care model for patients on IV antibiotics. With her microbiology and ASP colleagues, she has published on use of novel diagnostic techniques for rapid microbe identification. Her primary academic interest is in medical education in ASP, infection prevention, and infectious diseases, and she has presented her work in this area at national meetings of SHEA and IDSA. In addition to her new responsibilities, Dr. Nori will continue in her role as Assistant Program Director for Education for the Infectious Diseases Fellowship Program and Montefiore Einstein, and Co-director of the OPAT program.
Published April 25, 2016
