Lakeland, FL – Bunch and Associates, LLC is pleased to announce that Dr. Gary Rischitelli, MD, JD, MPH, has joined its clinical staff as the organization’s full-time national medical director. Dr. Rischitelli brings a multi-faceted clinical scope to the Bunch team, both as a workers’ compensation industry veteran and as a professional in the medical and legal fields.
As a nationally renowned speaker and practicing physician, Dr. Rischitelli’s expertise is in occupational and environmental medicine and workers’ compensation managed care. His areas of specialty include toxicology, occupational exposures, disability accommodation, return to work, and fitness for duty. His research experience at the Oregon Health and Science University further qualifies him as an occupational and environmental health expert in health services delivery, injury prevention, and occupational infectious disease transmission. As a medical director at Liberty Northwest Insurance, Dr. Rischitelli provided medical expertise in utilization management, compensability determination, medical and pharmacy guideline and protocol development, and government and provider relations. In addition to his credentials as a medical physician, Dr. Rischitelli holds a Master of Public Health, a Juris Doctor, and a Certificate in Clinical Research and Human Investigation. He is board-certified in occupational medicine and a Fellow of the American College of Occupational & Environmental Medicine.
In his role, Dr. Rischitelli will measure the outcomes of Bunch’s clinical services delivery model and collaborate with the clinical solutions group on its patent-pending biopsychosocial assessment services. Additionally, he will oversee efforts to ensure the latest injury triage protocols are deployed within Bunch’s Nurse First Response (NFR®) unit. To keep his clinical skills current, Dr. Rischitelli will continue to treat patients injured on the job in his private practice.
As we recently highlighted in a Leaders Speak article on WorkCompWire, proactively tracking medical provider performance is essential to optimizing workers’ compensation outcomes. To equip Bunch’s clinical teams with stronger medical management solutions, Dr. Rischitelli will actively support the partner relations team in managing CONNECT™, Bunch’s outcomes-based provider selection tool. The availability of a staff medical director is essential to continued collaboration with providers and further enhances the integration of return-to-work analytics.
“Dr. Rischitelli will support our corporate strategies and help execute our clinical initiatives, empowering the hundreds of nurses on our team, who are located all across the country, to provide the safest and most aggressive return-to-work solutions in the industry,” commented Jean Chambers, RN, BSN, CCM, vice president of clinical services. “We look forward to working with Dr. Rischitelli on our top three initiatives: creatively approaching medical advisory functions, delivering superior clinical intervention, and strengthening our physician advisory program.”
“Dr. Rischitelli’s appointment reflects Bunch’s steadfast commitment to superior clinical delivery—which is one of our founding principles and continues to be a core competency for us in today’s marketplace,” stated Bunch CEO Lief Goodson. “I believe Dr. Rischitelli’s clinical and legislative acumen will ensure Bunch maintains an innovative, yet compliant approach to clinical delivery in America.”
Sharing a patient-centered approach to managing medical care for work-related injuries/illnesses, Bunch and Dr. Rischitelli stand poised to positively impact the workers’ compensation arena through creative approaches to superior clinical intervention. Dr. Rischitelli reflected on this development, remarking, “I am pleased to join the Bunch team and contribute to such an outstanding, ethical and innovative managed care organization, and I look forward to being a part of an industry leading provider of managed care services.”
Source: Bunch/ISG Services LLC