Abstract
My family’s journey in managing my husband’s battle with Stage IV Colorectal Cancer has been an eye-opener to the inequities in Healthcare, not only amongst the insured and uninsured but also within the insured subgroup. It has motivated us to develop ways to narrow this gap and changed our practice of medicine. It has pushed me out of my comfort zone to change positions from the Medical Director of a large, established hospitalist group to the Chair of Medicine at a top 10 U.S. News and World Report Cancer Center which is also a Center of Academic Excellence. I felt the latter would offer more challenges and opportunities to make a difference in Cancer Care in all populations as well as motivate physicians in training to do the same.
Biography
Dr. Asha Ramsakal is the Chair of the Department of Medicine at Moffitt Cancer Center. Moffitt Cancer Center is ranked number eight in US News and World Report top cancer hospitals nationwide. It is at the very forefront of cancer centers worldwide in pioneering advances like CAR T-cell therapy, a promising approach to immunotherapy that uses a patient’s own immune cells to recognize and attack their tumors.
Dr. Ramsakal is also an Associate Professor at the University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine and provides direct oversight of Internal Medicine Resident Education at Moffitt with an active didactic role and the goal of making board certified, competent, compassionate physicians. She has instructed medical students, residents, and interns on the discipline of internal medicine and interdisciplinary oncology for more than two decades. Dr. Ramsakal is well published; she’s written several book chapters on oncologic emergencies and many articles on infections in cancer patients as well as nouvel therapies for the unique complications of immune mediated sequela of check-point inhibitors.
Her clinical interests include the optimal management of medical comorbidities and treatment sequela in cancer patients by academic oncologic hospitalists. Previously, Dr. Ramsakal was Medical Director of the Baycare Medical Group East Region Hospitalist and Palliative Care Programs.
Dr. Ramsakal earned her DO medical degree at Nova-Southeastern University at Ft. Lauderdale followed by an internal medicine residency at the University of South Florida College of Medicine in Tampa. She was also the Chief Medicine Resident at the James A. Haley VA Hospital. She is board certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine.
She has been nominated as one of America’s Top Physicians, America’s Top Internist, has been featured in Top Doctor’s Magazine 2019 and she is listed in America’s Registry of Outstanding Professionals as a Lifetime Member for Outstanding Contribution to Professionals and the Community. She has been the recipient of the “University of South Florida Outstanding Resident Teaching Award at Moffitt Cancer Center” four times and was named “Florida American College of Physicians Outstanding Teacher of the Year.”
Additional attributes are the depth and breadth of her committee participation and leadership and her history of community outreach locally and abroad. Dr. Ramsakal dedicates time each year to provide voluntary medical services to underserved Honduran and Guatemalan villages.
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