Dr. Elsaid joins Hospitalist Service team at Montgomery Memorial

Dr. Elsaid joins Hospitalist Service team at Montgomery Memorial

TROY – Sameh Elsaid, M.D., has joined the FirstHealth Montgomery Memorial Hospital Hospitalist Service, becoming the second physician on the MMH Hospitalist team.

Hospitalists are medical doctors who specialize in the care of patients who are in the hospital. They do not have offices outside the hospital.

The other member of the Hospitalist Service program at Montgomery Memorial is Ralph L. Wall Jr., M.D.

“Patients don’t come to the hospital unless they feel very sick, and I usually don’t discharge them from the hospital unless they are feeling much better,” says Dr. Elsaid. “These few days in between are what medicine is all about for me. That is the type of medicine I enjoy practicing and what Montgomery Memorial Hospital provides: compassionate, hands-on, patient-oriented and family-sensitive.”

Dr. Elsaid, who is board certified in internal medicine and infectious diseases, came to the MMH Hospitalist Service in December from the Hospitalist Service program at FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital.

He graduated from the Alexandria University School of Medicine before completing a six-month program as a primary care physician in an underserved rural area, both in his native Egypt. He was then an internal medicine resident at St. Vincent’s Medical Center, an affiliate of the Columbia School of Medicine in New York, and later an infectious disease fellow at the University of Kentucky in Lexington.

He was a full-time staff physician and deputy medical director at the McCain Correctional Hospital in Raeford before joining Moore Regional’s Hospitalist Service.

Since they practice only in the hospital, the hospitalist physicians at Montgomery Memorial Hospital medically manage every aspect of a patient’s hospital stay. They are available to respond to unexpected changes in a patient’s condition and take care of whatever medical need the patient may have.

In this respect, they differ from most primary care doctors who need to spend most of their time seeing patients in their office, leaving them with a limited amount of time to care for patients in the hospital.

With hospitalists managing their care, MMH patients have the benefits of receiving high-quality care all day, every day; seeing a doctor as often as they need to; and having a doctor more readily available to speak with them or their family.

“Our hospitalists, Dr. Elsaid and Dr. Wall, are an integral part of the health care team here,” says Montgomery Memorial President Kerry Hensley. “Their full-time presence in the hospital fosters good communication with the staff and coordinated, quality care for our patients and their families.”