Gifford Medical Center’s hospitalist team has grown to include certified physician assistant Joshua Gleiner. Gleiner of Orleans comes to Gifford from North Country Health System, where he worked for the last two years providing primary care to rural patients of all ages at Community Medical Associates in Newport.
A 2001 graduate Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Gleiner went on to attend Finger Lakes School of Massage Therapy in Ithaca, N.Y., and then the physician assistant master’s degree program at Albany Medical College, also in New York.
Before becoming a physician assistant, he worked as a medical assistant at Champlain Valley Urgent Care in Burlington, as a chiropractic assistant in Colorado and as a massage therapist in New York and Colorado. He’s also volunteered in a host of other hospital settings, including the emergency department Porter Adventist Hospital in Colorado, as an emergency medical technician in New York, and massaging stroke victims and post-surgery patients at Cayuga Medical Center in Ithaca.
He started work at Gifford as hospitalist in July. He joins physicians Dr. Martin Johns and Dr. Josh Plavin and physician assistants Sue Burgos and Fred Staples.
Hospitalists treat inpatients, or hospitalized patients.
Caring for the acutely ill, the ability to diagnose illnesses through timely laboratory and diagnostic imaging results, seeing patients through their illness in the hospital setting and making a difference at a difficult time in patients’ lives are among the aspects of the job that attracted Gleiner.
Gifford Medical Center in Randolph, Vt., is a community hospital with family health centers in Bethel, Chelsea, Rochester and Sharon and specialty services throughout central Vermont. Gifford is a full-service hospital with a 24-hour emergency department, inpatient and rehabilitation units, a day care, an adult day care and a 30-bed nursing home, the Menig Extended Care Facility, which opened in 1998 on the main campus. The Birthing Center, established in 1977, was the first in Vermont to offer an alternative to the traditional hospital-based deliveries and continues to be a leader in midwifery and family-centered care.
The hospital’s mission is to improve individuals’ and community health by providing and assuring access to affordable and high-quality health care in Gifford’s service area.