An emergency medicine physician with Oswego Health since 2013 takes the helm as the hospital’s new chief medical officer. He talks about his plans, challenges and how he got the position
By Chris Motola
Q: How long have you been Oswego Health’s chief medical officer?
A: I started July 1.
Q: Previously you were president of the medical staff of Oswego Health. How do these two roles differ?
A: The president of the medical staff provides leadership and guidance to the medical staff and promotes communication between the medical staff and the administration and board of trustees. It also involves maintaining professionalism in the medical staff. It’s a two-year appointment. As far as the chief medical officer goes, that involves day-to-day operations of the medical staff, maintaining the quality of care that we provide and development of policies and procedures. Increasing service lines. Our medical staff is a separate entity from Oswego Health and can include both employed clinicians and community clinicians with medical privileges at Oswego Hospital. So I’m making sure the quality of care is consistent throughout all of our locations and overseeing the employed clinicians.
Q: Was working in administration a long-term goal?
A: You want to advance your career. I also have a strong affinity for the Oswego Health system. I’ve been here for 12 years. So it was both the next step in my career and an opportunity to improve care and the resources available to the hospital. So it was a natural next step.
Q: Having been a part of the health system for so long, what are some of the challenges you’ve identified when it comes to delivering healthcare to Oswego County.
A: Availability of primary care is a big issue in our community and we’ve worked very hard to increase access. We’ve employed new physicians. We have six sites now offering primary care and are working on increasing specialty care, more surgeons, more orthopedics and also pediatrics. We’ve recently increased the capacity of our urology practice. So many things the patient would have to go out of county to receive we can now offer within the county. We’re constantly recruiting people and increasing our capacity. The goal is to make sure we provide quality care at home and serve our community the best that we can.
Q: Strategically, what would you like to improve about the Oswego Health system over the course of your tenure as CMO?
A: Medicine is always evolving. Every day there’s something new. My biggest focus is quality of care. And that never ends. Things improve, guidelines change. The goal is to reduce the number of unforeseen medical errors. We also recently started a fall prevention program, which we think is very important to reduce risks to our patients.
Q: How do you collaborate with the larger university hospitals when you need to?
A: We are an independent healthcare system and that’s what we’ll always aspire to be, but collaboration is important and necessary. We’re a community-based hospital; we don’t have all the resources and subspecialties we’d need to take care of every patient. That’s where those big hospitals come into play. We collaborate with Upstate [University Hospital]. We have collaborations for urology, neurology with Upstate. We also collaborate with Crouse for radiology. We’re always collaborating with tertiary care centers and hospitals, figuring out what we can offer them and what they can offer us.
Q: How is the hospital preparing for the aging of the community?
A: We do have a large geriatric population. People are living longer, which comes with its own set of issues. Our most recent initiative on that is fall prevention. Falls are a pretty significant cause of mortality and morbidity in the geriatric population. So we’ve decided to run this program system-wide. We just opened a center for rehabilitation and mobility to help individuals who need short-term rehab back home as fast as possible. So if they had a stroke or a car accident or they fell, our therapists work with them to help stabilize so they can be returned back to their home setting.
Q: With regard to physician recruitment, what are the challenges and advantages Oswego Health has? What are the selling points?
A: The difficulties are that there’s a physician shortage, a provider shortage. It’s not easy to find physi-cians and bring them to areas remote from the bigger metropolitan areas. Advantages? We’re not actually that far from Syracuse; about 40 minutes. Some physicians prefer community hospital settings, which we offer. We can offer H1-B visas if physicians need those, so that’s a big advantage. There are a lot of outdoor activities available for physicians and their families. I think we’re a very attractive location in a lot of ways. The challenges are universal. There aren’t enough physicians and providers out there.
Lifelines
Name: Wajeeh Sana, M.D.
Position: Chief medical officer at Oswego Health
Career: Held various leadership positions throughout his career in CNY including service medical direc-tor for McFee Ambulance; clinical assistant professor at SUNY Upstate Medical Center; medical director and chairman of the Oswego Hospital emergency department and the Fulton and Central Square urgent care centers. In 2023 was appointed president of Oswego Health’s medical staff.
Hometown: Lahore, Pakistan
Education: Medical school at Allama Iqbal Medical College, a public medical college in Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan; residency at St. Vincent’s Mercy Medical Center in Toledo, Ohio. Specializes in emergency medicine
Affiliations: Oswego Health
Organizations: American Medical Association; American Academy of Family Physicians
Family: Wife, 13-year-old son, dog
Hobbies: Scuba diving, hiking, racing cars and motorcycles