Meet the Specialist: Regina Druz, MD, FASNC, National Director of Cardiology

Regina Druz, MD, MBA joined ChenMed in August 2021 as National Director of Cardiology, part of an 11-member team of nationally recognized specialists across numerous disciplines. For Dr. Druz – she’s an international expert in cardiac imaging, digital health innovator, and functional medicine practitioner – this new role embraces each step of her impressive career.

It's also the happy end to a decade-long personal journey to find a better way of practicing medicine. Twelve years ago, Dr. Druz was director of nuclear cardiology and cardiology fellowship research for a large hospital in the New York City region. One day, while walking into the nuclear stress-testing area, she saw an elderly, frail woman being wheeled into the testing room.

“I thought to myself that it was so sad that we really don’t do much to preserve the vitality and wellness as we age,” Dr. Druz recalls, “The traditional, for-profit healthcare system is focused on tests but not invested in the health span of patients. This started me on a journey to explore it.”

A Personal and Professional Wellness Path

Her path to medicine was traditional enough: BS in Biology from Hunter College of the City University of New York, MD from Cornell University’s Weill Medical College, and an internal medicine residency and cardiovascular fellowship training at the New York Hospital –Weill Cornell Medical Center. Dr. Druz quickly made a name for herself in the cardiology departments of a handful of large New York hospitals. She has directed the Nuclear Cardiology and Cardiac Fellowship Research at the North Shore University Hospital, Hofstra School of Medicine, and was a chief of cardiology and a chair of cardiovascular service line in a community hospital serving the second largest Medicaid population in the state of New York. She has published extensively and is active in the national societies as a board member of the American Society of Nuclear Cardiology and an immediate past chair of the American College of Cardiology (ACC) Healthcare Innovation section. She currently serves on the ACC Leadership Council for Digital Heath Transformation.

Her disillusionment with the U.S. healthcare system coincided as she was approaching middle age. “I was experiencing the typical signs of aging-weight gain, poor sleep, headaches,” says Dr. Druz, who began looking for opportunities to modify her practice and to address overall wellness and prevention.

“Illness is often by chance, but wellness is always by choice,” says Dr. Druz, who is board-certified in cardiovascular diseases, echocardiography, nuclear cardiology, cardiac CT, and functional and anti-aging medicine. “I modeled my own personalized lifestyle approach to my wellness for patients in my practice.”

Functional medicine – a systems-biology approach that examines emotional, spiritual, and lifestyle factors that influence disease – was the answer to her own wellness needs. Certain it could help her patients, she founded the Integrative Cardiology Center of Long Island to provide patients with a unique, holistic approach to cardiac care and interventions. She and her staff created customized wellness programs – nutrition, functional medicine, yoga, and stress reduction – and provided state-of-the-art cardiac consultations and treatments.

At the time, several colleagues thought she was tanking her career, Dr. Druz recalls, but her patients were flourishing: “My patients appreciated that the lens of integrated care offers many opportunities like fewer medications and hospital admissions and better, coordinated care.”

The Heart of Her Practice

Her private practice was thriving when she received a phone call that meant another detour on the path to joining ChenMed’s comprehensive Clinical Network. This diversion, though, deepened her resolve to treat patients differently.

“One of the local hospitals in New York was looking for a chair of cardiology to build their services,” she recalls. The hospital served the second-largest Medicaid patient community in New York City, a population that resonated with her for the level of need and its lack of access to quality cardiac care.

Her three-year stint as chair was eye-opening. “This underscored for me that the healthcare system was truly broken and that every patient wants to do things to make themselves well,” Dr. Druz explains. “They want leaders to guide them toward wellness.”

Dr. Druz’s integrated medicine approach was very successful at the hospital, enabling doctors to care for cardiac patients without transferring them to tertiary institutions. She continued her education, adding an Executive MBA and MS in Healthcare Policy and Research to her list of Cornell degrees.

In July 2021, two months after graduating, another phone call inspired a new path. This time, it was ChenMed calling with an invitation to head its cardiology program. A few months later, Dr. Druz moved to Miami.

“ChenMed is the fusion of the healthcare business model I wanted and the whole-person approach to medicine that I am passionate about,” she adds. “I love helping our PCPs on the front lines. I can see how challenging some of our patients’ cardiac issues are, and I admire our doctors’ ability to take on cardiac care decisions. They know that I have their backs.”

She also loves continuing her wellness journey in Miami with walks on the beach with her husband, a dentist, and their mini Goldendoodle, Ginger. A mother of three adult children, ages 19 to 22, Dr. Druz also enjoys reading, writing, traveling, and reformer Pilates. And even though she will always be a New Yorker at heart, she is finding Miami’s weather a welcome change from the snowy New York winters.

Comprehensive Support to PCPs and Patients

ChenMed’s approach to specialist care means any PCP in any ChenMed market has immediate access to specialists like Dr. Druz through secure text, email, and phone consultations. Each specialist has created automatic diagnostic and intervention prompts in the electronic medical records and written digital resources for PCPs to access.

Dr. Druz and her fellow specialists consult with each other and PCPs for complex and everyday questions. “This reimagines and reframes our care at ChenMed to make it deliberate by pulling all members together,” she adds. “We owe our seniors wholesome and patient-centered care that reduces hospitalizations, unnecessary procedures, and keeps them well.”

Dr. Druz hosts in-person “Lunch and Learns” and works with PCPs to create integrated health plans for their cardiac patients. These plans include the tried-and-true tools she first started using on her own journey to wellness: emphasizing personalized nutritional plans; encouraging patients to monitor blood pressure, weight, and blood oxidation; promoting exercise, and more.

“Our patients deserve the chance to get what is likely to help them the most, and that often means not just medicine, or surgery, but lifestyle interventions,” adds Dr. Druz, who also is pleasantly surprised by ChenMed’s encouragement of its physicians to innovate with new projects. She’s launching the Heart Failure Toolkit in collaboration with Pamela Sarich, ChenMed’s National Network Director of Medical Costs and New Markets, Center of Excellence.

“The Toolkit will help PCPs manage heart failure patients using web- and print-based materials, along with a weight scale, blood pressure cuffs, and educational resources,” Dr. Druz explains. “My passion is digital health and using cardiology’s digital tools, telemedicine, and artificial intelligence to help clinicians collaborate, network, and educate and to deliver quality, state-of-the-art care to patients.”

“I am inspired every day by ChenMed’s PCPs, colleagues, and leaders,” says Dr. Druz. “My purpose comes to light when I work with the PCPs to make a meaningful change in our patients’ lives.”