UH Geauga Primary Care Provider Fills Vital Role Managing Care in Skilled Nursing Facilities

UH Clinical Update | September 2023

Matthew Pawlicki, MD, CMD, was already on the path to becoming a primary care physician when he began medical school.

Matthew Pawlicki, MD, CMD

After majoring in chemistry and minoring in philosophy at Kenyon College in Gambier, he had headed to another Ohio school - Wright State University’s Boonshoft School of Medicine in Dayton.

At that time, he explains, the program’s focus was on educating medical students in primary care. It was already becoming clear even then that there was a need for more primary care physicians, in the Midwest and around the country.

Dr. Pawlicki followed medical school with a residency in family medicine at St. Anthony Hospital Central in Denver. By the time he finished, he’d already been recruited by University Hospitals to become a family medicine specialist in Geauga County.

Although he quickly had a busy practice, he also became an attending physician for three skilled nursing facilities in the county, all owned by the Ohman family – Blossom, Briar and Holly. He went on to become certified as a medical director for skilled nursing facilities, after the family approached him about that role. He now serves in that capacity for all three facilities.

Recently, Dr. Pawlicki was honored with the “Cliff Appreciates Dinner with the Doc” award in great part for how his focus on the patients at the nursing facilities has helped them, as well as UH Geauga Medical Center, when they are taken there for treatment – or more importantly, when that might not be necessary.

“We now have programs in place at the three facilities to bring in more intensive IVs and EKGs, things we can handle here in the buildings, with RNs and respiratory therapists,” he says. “That keeps as many patients as possible from having to be re-admitted to the hospital.”

Marlea Miano, MD, Chief Medical Officer at UH Geauga Medical Center, credits Dr. Pawlicki with making that happen.

“Dr. Pawlicki is always thinking about ways to avoid unnecessary emergency department visits or hospitalizations for these patients, which can be so unsettling,” she says. “He routinely reaches out to me to collaborate on the most efficient way to get patients the services they need - whether a PICC line, PEG tube, or blood transfusion, when the easy choice would have been to send the patient to the emergency department.

Another effective method of Dr. Pawlicki’s is that even when a patient requires a hospital visit, a formal admission is not necessary if they return to their skilled nursing facility before midnight – and that is often possible to achieve.

“Even people who have pneumonia or an exacerbation of their COPD, we can take care of them here,” he adds, referring to the nursing facility. He points out that this in great part is due to the support received from Dr. Sean Cannone’s medical group, which supervises a team of nurse practitioners at the facilities.

“They are plugged in to do what they need to do,” says Dr. Pawlicki.

In her nomination of Dr. Pawlicki for the Dinner with the Doc award, Dr. Miano also noted that he demonstrates the UH values of service excellence, trust, and integrity.

Over the past few years, she says, Dr. Pawlicki has innovated, for example, by championing a protocol for direct admission to the skilled nursing facility from the Emergency Department. Dr. Pawlicki also helped develop a Safe Transitions Checklist to ensure that critical information was communicated at the time that patients were discharged from the hospital to a post-acute physician.

And Jason Glowczewski, Chief Operating Officer of UH Geauga Medical Center, says “Dr. Pawlicki is the type of physician who flies under the radar as he is quiet and humble. He does a lot of really great work, and is committed to the community and to the hospital.”