Ahmed Abdelmoity, MD, was born with a heart disease that required him to have open heart surgery when he was 9. The care he received as a child, which he calls the best in the world, allowed him to move from a life where he needed to limit his physical activity to one in which he competitively played basketball.
That care also inspired him to pursue a career in pediatrics and build a program that delivers world-class care.
"I knew early on that I wanted to do something related to children's medicine to pay back the favor," Dr. Abdelmoity said. "I also knew I wanted to build a top-notch program from scratch."
As he moved through his medical training, Dr. Abdelmoity decided to specialize in epilepsy because he felt as if he could really make a difference for children worldwide. There is a high prevalence of epilepsy in child neurology and usually not many answers for those patients, he said
After completing his residency and fellowship, Dr. Abdelmoity joined Children's Mercy in Kansas City (Mo.) in 2005 to build an epilepsy program from scratch.
He now serves as chief of the section of epilepsy and neurophysiology at Children's Mercy as well as director of the clinical neurophysiology fellowship program for the hospital.
Under his leadership, Children's Mercy's epilepsy center has grown into a top-notch, level 4 trauma center with 24 practitioners.
Here, Dr. Abdelmoity discusses the growth of the epilepsy program, offers his advice to other healthcare leaders and describes the unique challenges facing pediatric medicine.
Editor's Note: Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Question: Can you share how the epilepsy and neurophysiology department has evolved at Children's Mercy?
Dr. Ahmed Abdelmoity: I wanted to work at a place where I could build an epilepsy program from scratch. I wanted to establish a top-notch program to serve a community that didn't have that service. When I came to Children's Mercy, I was the first epileptologist, and I was essentially a one-man show. From day one, I had the goal of establishing a level 4 epilepsy center, which is the highest designation in epilepsy. Kansas City really was the perfect location because Children's Mercy is a great place that has all the infrastructure and a great administration that has a willingness to serve children.
I began quickly building the foundation for the program, establishing policies and procedures and hiring experts. In 2007, after getting the program off the ground, I began starting the application process to secure a designation. In 2009, we were designated a level 4 epilepsy center.
Fast forward to now: We have a team of 24 practitioners, which includes seven epileptologists, six nurse practitioners and a bunch of neurologists. We have one of the largest epilepsy-monitoring units in the nation, with with an eight-bed unit that will soon become a 12-bed unit. We are a BERT-certified lab, which means that our standards and our quality is the highest it can be. We provide medical care for epilepsy, dietary care for epilepsy and neuromodulation, an advanced treatment for patients who do not respond to seizure medications. We also offer surgical treatment for patients with focal epilepsy with high outcomes. We are constantly evolving to ensure we have the best and most advanced treatment options for patients.
Q: The epilepsy program is working on expanding overseas. Can you discuss the strategy behind that and what really inspired you to do so?
AA: Just like in the U.S., there is a shortage of epilepsy specialists internationally. The number of epilepsy specialists is actually even much lower overseas. Our goal as a hospital is to treat epilepsy in general. So part of the way we treat epilepsy worldwide is through direct patient care, but we also have a fellowship program that trains young physicians to become child neurologists and epileptologists to help address the shortages both in the U.S. and overseas. We have trained international physicians from Australia, Brazil, Puerto Rico, India, Jordan and Taiwan. Many of them came to learn about our processes so they can duplicate some of what we are doing. One specific physician from Jordan spent 18 months training with us, and he replicated our protocols and systems in Jordan, and they now have a very successful program.
Another way we are expanding overseas is using telemedicine. We often take care of international patients by reviewing their cases, giving our expert input and sometimes even flying them to our center to receive treatment.
Q: What's next for the center?
AA: The culture of Children's Mercy is that we are always evolving. We're always innovating to make sure that we are providing the latest and the greatest, not just treatment, but also diagnostic tools for children with epilepsy. So what is next is to continue to extend the program by adding more faculty and adding more research. We recently received a $1.6 million grant to help expand epilepsy care to underserved areas throughout the state of Missouri. We plan to extend our expertise through telemedicine. This will be a four-year project that we are working on.
In addition, we are in the process of finalizing the last steps to create an epilepsy-specific research institute. So in addition to advanced treatment options, we are working to be on the cutting edge of research, making sure that we are a very big player in what's to come next, what is going to be the next way to diagnose or the best way to find answers for epilepsy in the future. Overall, we want to extend our care to as many children as possible, not just in the Kansas City area and its neighboring cities, but across the nation. And we want to be a leader on the research front, finding new answers and finding new treatments to help patients with epilepsy.
Q: Can you describe some of the unique challenges in pediatric medicine?
AA: One of the bigger challenges in pediatric medicine is the shortage of pediatric specialists. There is a large gap between the number of patients who need health specialists and the availability of those health specialists, no matter the specialty. Another challenge for pediatric medicine is the external economic pressures. Providers must improve healthcare utilization and how healthcare dollars are spent. It's a challenge for some systems.
Q: If you could offer one piece of advice to another healthcare leader, what would it be?
AA: Healthcare leaders are trying to solve multiple challenges at a time, including the shortage of pediatric health specialists, coupled with an increasing demand, the economic issues and contracts with payers. But while solutions are being put in place, those practicing medicine should have a true north goal — delivering the best possible care to patients. As we are developing these processes to cut waste, the patient needs to be front and center of what we are doing, and all the other challenges can actually be worked out and can be worked around. But we cannot compromise any quality. This requires looking at the whole well-being of the child or patient, not just addressing a specific condition or disease.
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