AHA Appoints 2011 Chair of Section for Long-Term Care and Rehabilitation

Michele F. Bellantoni, MD, medical director of Johns Hopkins Bayview Care Center in Baltimore, is the 2011 chair of the American Hospital Association’s (AHA) Section for Long-Term Care and Rehabilitation.

Bellantoni will lead the section’s governing council, which advises the AHA on public policy issues of concern to all post-acute and continuing care providers. The governing council represents executives from among the nation’s leading rehabilitation, acute long-term care, skilled, home health, and continuing care services.

Bellantoni has been medical director of Johns Hopkins Bayview Care Center, a dually licensed 150-bed chronic hospital and skilled nursing facility, since 1997. She is also an associate professor and clinical director of the Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

A member of the American Medical Directors Association, Bellantoni is also a member of the editorial board of Johns Hopkins Health After 50, a periodical for older adults to promote health and wellness. She is an ad hoc reviewer for: J American Geriatrics Society, J of Gerontology, JAMA, and the Am J Medicine and an administrative editor for Practical Reviews in Geriatric Medicine.

Bellantoni is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and completed an internal medicine residency at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Her current research is focused on improving the outcomes of medically complex older adults who require post-acute and long-term care.

Patricia Ostaszewski, CEO, Healthsouth Rehabilitation Hospital of Toms River, Toms River, New Jersey, was named as the chair-elect of the section and will assume the role of chair in 2012.

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