Providence palliative physician lands prestigious clinical scholarship
Oct 9, 2017
Institute For Human Caring
Matthew Gonzales, M.D., a software engineer-turned palliative care physician,
is among 10 physicians and nurses named into Cambia Health Foundation’s
national 2017
Sojourns Scholar Leadership Program.
The Sojourns program cultivates and advances the next generation of palliative
care leaders from across the country.
Each scholar receives a two-year, $180,000 grant to support research, clinical,
educational or policy projects. Scholars also receive mentoring and leadership training.
Dr. Gonzales, an associate medical director at the
Providence Institute for Human Caring, will use the grant to continue customizing the Epic electronic health
record (EHR) to make it easier for providers to practice and measure their
success at delivering whole person care.
“I’ve always been fascinated by the intersection of humanistic
medicine and informatics,” Dr. Gonzales said. “The EHR can
actually aid the delivery of person-centered care.” He added that
he's looking forward to working closely with informatics and health
care intelligence teams to realize this vision.
As a teen, Dr. Gonzales saw his uncle succumb to a serious illness.
The traumatic episode led him on a dual-track career path. Prior to medical
school while at Stanford University, he wrote code for a computer system
that helped doctors develop personalized anti-HIV therapies. That system
has been adapted for use in Africa.
Dr. Gonzales later entered a palliative care fellowship at UCSF School
of Medicine.
“Early in my clinical practice, I saw that we often spend time fighting
the wrong fight,” Dr. Gonzales said. “Despite all of our technological
medical advancements, people often died horribly. They died in physical
or emotional pain, with unresolved feelings and regrets.
“The fundamental human experience of dying was being neglected,”
he added. “I was relieved to see another way: healing can be possible,
even when cure is not. It became clear to me during my palliative care
fellowship that this was my life’s work.”
Working with informaticists across Providence St. Joseph Health, Dr. Gonzales has
modified Epic to capture advance directives and goals of care conversations. More recently,
he has worked with
Xealth, which allows physicians to “prescribe” videos from Epic directly
into patient MyChart accounts.
“I’m humbled and honored to be among those selected for this
year’s Sojourns Scholar Leadership Program, and thank Cambia for
this amazing opportunity,” Dr. Gonzales said. “This would
not have been possible without the support of my colleagues at the institute,
and the palliative care field as a whole.”
Ira Byock, M.D., founder and chief medical officer of the institute, said,
“We look forward to seeing Matt realize his vision of an electronic
health record that actually makes it easier for all of us in health care
to do the right thing – honor patient wishes.”