- June 19, 2023
- ByApolloMD
Dany Accilien, MD, MBA
At one point during his medical education, Dany Accilien, MD, MBA, considered specializing in sports medicine or ultrasound.
Yet one question followed him throughout medical school at Florida International University and during an emergency medicine residency at the University of Chicago: “What can I do next that will help me better understand the health care ecosystem and make an impact within it?”
He found answers in the two-year ApolloMD Emergency Medicine Administrative Fellowship, which he recently completed.
Dr. Accilien is the newly appointed Chief Medical Officer for RelyMD, ApolloMD’s telehealth service. He will also work as an emergency medicine clinician and clinical faculty member at Wellstar Kennestone Regional Medical Center in Marietta, GA. As part of the fellowship, he completed his executive master’s in business administration (MBA) at Emory University Goizueta Business School.
Mayur Patel, MD, MBA
Mayur Patel, MD, MBA, also recently completed the fellowship by earning an MBA at the University of Georgia Terry College of Business. He now heads to a global emergency medicine fellowship at the University of Florida.
The ApolloMD Emergency Medicine Administrative Fellowship is an immersive two-year program for new and recent emergency medicine residency graduates with an interest in emergency medicine administration, operations, and department leadership. The comprehensive program provides hands-on involvement and mentorship that prepares residency graduates with leadership, administrative, quality, risk management, research, and operational skills to lead an emergency department, hospital, or health care system.
Training future health care leaders
“The goal of the fellowship is to prepare and train emergency medicine physicians to become leaders in emergency medicine at the department level, hospital level or corporate level,” says Tariq Noohani, DO, MBA, FACEP, FACOEP, who serves as ApolloMD’s Fellowship Program Director.
“The difference between our fellowship and others is that our headquarters are located right here in Atlanta, so from day one, our fellows have immediate corporate exposure to emergency medicine operations leadership and work closely with our corporate leaders at every level,” Dr. Noohani explains. “We also tailor the fellowship program to the individual’s career goals and interests.”
Fellows serve in leadership roles, including as medical directors, on hospital committees, and on ApolloMD’s corporate committees “to really learn about corporate health care and the hospital process from the inside out,” says Dr. Noohani. During the fellowship they also earn an MBA or MHA at one of several Atlanta-area colleges including Emory University, Georgia Tech, University of Georgia, Kennesaw State, or Georgia State University.
Dr. Patel and Dr. Accilien with Tariq Noohani, DO, MBA, FACEP, FACOEP, ApolloMD Fellowship Program Director
A great opportunity, “a ton of support”
“I’ve always known that I wanted to do things outside of clinical medicine but within the space of health care systems and operations,” says Dr. Accilien, 30, who grew up in Haiti. “I want to understand the ecosystem of health care.”
Buoyed by what he describes as “phenomenal” MBA leadership training at Emory, he pursued an interest in telehealth during his fellowship to better understand the connections between pre-hospital care, home health, and facility-based health. He also served for several months as medical director of RelyMD, ApolloMD’s telehealth service.
Post-graduation, he joined ApolloMD as RelyMD’s Chief Medical Officer.
“The fellowship is a great opportunity,” Dr. Accilien says, “and I’ve been given a ton of support at every phase. It’s given me an entirely new perspective on day-to-day emergency medicine training and care. I’ve always been generally happy when I’m on shift, but I’m even happier on shift now because I have a broader, better understanding of how I can make a meaningful impact on the health care system.”
“Health care is a business, and as physicians, we’re not often trained in the business side of health care,” he says. “Being able to get that training in a program that is so flexible has been amazing. Now I know there are opportunities out there in emergency medicine that I didn’t even know existed before the fellowship, and I have a much better understanding of how the system works.”