|
|
|
AIDS treatment has evolved from providing palliative care for desperately sick patients to offering aggressive treatment to symptom-free HIV-positive patients, who often require a complex outpatient regimen for many years. While more work is needed, the progress made this far has resulted in some patients returning Lazarus-like to active lives from seemingly certain doom. This month Fact File talks with Andrew Zolopa, director of the Positive Care Clinic and assistant professor of medicine; Jose G. Montoya, co-director of the clinic and assistant professor of medicine; and Jan Porter, the clinic's social worker.
1. The Positive Care Clinic is multidisciplinary, providing a variety of services for HIV-positive patients in the context of primary care. The clinic is a service of Stanford Hospital and Clinics and is based in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Geographic Medicine. The clinic is located at 1101 Welch Road. 2. The Positive Care Clinic opened in a converted inpatient unit in 1994. Two years later the practice had grown to nearly 300 patients. Now with about 600 active patients, the Positive Care Clinic is one of the largest HIV practices in the Bay Area. Approximately 1,200 to 1,400 patients are involved in Stanford- or Santa Clara County/Stanford-affiliated programs, making the combined educational/treatment effort one of the largest HIV programs of its type in the country. 3. Stanford faculty, through an innovative affiliation agreement signed in July 1998, provide medical direction for the Santa Clara County AIDS Program. Under the agreement, faculty physicians provide comprehensive care to patients treated at the county's Positive Partners in AIDS Care and Education Clinic (Positive PACE) and to AIDS inpatients at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. Residents and postdoctoral fellows are involved in the program, and Santa Clara County patients have access to innovative treatments through the same clinical trials as those available at Stanford. 4. The Positice Care Clinic's physician staff members are Zolopa and Montoya, staff physician Michael Harbour, as well as clinical faculty members Dennis McShane and Dennis Israelski. 5. The clinic works closely with the AIDS Clinical Trials, directed by Thomas Merigan, the George E. and Lucy Becker Professor of Medicine. 6. About 75 percent of the clinic's patients are gay men. Women comprise about 12 to 15 percent of the practice, while the rest include men and women infected by a blood transfusion, hetero-sexual contact or IV-drug use. 7. Andrew Zolopa graduated from UCLA in 1984 and completed his residency as chief resident in internal medicine at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in 1988. After serving as a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar and completing a postdoctoral fellowship in infectious diseases at Stanford in 1992, Zolopa joined the faculty at UCSF School of Medicine in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatics. In 1994 he returned to Stanford as director of the Positive Care Clinic and joined the Stanford faculty as assistant professor of medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases and Geographic Medicine. He is an active researcher and teacher in addition to his clinical practice and leadership. 8. Jose G. Montoya graduated from medical school in Cali, Colombia, in 1985. He completed his internship and residency in medicine at Tulane University School of Medicine, New Orleans, in 1990. After four years as a postdoctoral fellow in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Geographic Medicine at Stanford, Montoya became an attending physician at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System. Two years later, in 1996, his duties expanded to incliude Stanford Hospital, the Positive Care Clinic, and an active research and teaching program. 9. Jan Porter received her master's degree in social work from San Francisco State University in 1982 while working as a medical social worker with diverse responsibilities at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, South San Francisco. While serving in 1986 as an oncology social worker at Redwood City's Sequoia Hospital, Porter began working with an increasing number of hospitalized HIV patients. She joined Stanford and the Positive Care Clinic in 1994, serving as a clinical social worker for both inpatients and outpatients.
10. The Positive Care Clinic, Zolopa and Montoya can be reached at (650) 498-5013. Porter can be contacted at 725-4380.
Go to
|
COLUMNS President of the Medical Staff NEWS UCSF Stanford Announces $170 Million Reduction Plan to Balance its Budget Physicians Essential in Driving Cost and Quality Decisions Publication Highlights Clinical Labs |
