Doubling up

The recent retirement of John Asarian, a long-serving and much-loved Chico pediatrician, has resulted not only in the addition of two new doctors in Chico, but also staffing changes at Enloe Medical Center that are reflective of changes occurring at hospitals nationwide.

Asarian was a partner—with Dr. Ejaz Ahmed—at Chico Pediatrics. Filling out the medical staff was Jill Berry, a nurse practitioner still with the practice. Replacing Asarian are two highly qualified pediatricians new to town, Drs. Evbu Ogbeide and Anna Robertson.

Why two doctors to replace one? Because in addition to their private practices at Chico Pediatrics, both Ogbeide and Robertson are also part-time, salaried hospitalists in the employ of Enloe. Their job there is to care for all hospitalized children, regardless of who their family pediatrician is (or whether they have one).

Ogbeide, for example, works 12-hour hospital shifts on Mondays and Tuesdays and one or two shifts on weekends. Other days she’s seeing patients at Chico Pediatrics.

Robertson’s schedule is a mirror image of Ogbeide’s. When she is in the office seeing out-patients, Ogbeide is at the hospital, caring for in-patients—and vice versa.

Interviewed in her office at Chico Pediatrics, Ogbeide said she likes the variety the arrangement provides. “I had training in both in-patient and out-patient care,” she said, “and this enables me to keep up my out-patient skills.”

Historically, comprehensive pediatric care has meant that patients who are hospitalized continue to see their primary-care physicians, with whom they and their parents have a bond, on a regular basis until they are discharged.

Under a hospitalist system, the doctors in charge of their care treat them only as long as they are hospitalized. When they’re released, their care reverts to their primary doctor. It’s a system that is rapidly growing throughout the country.

Critics of the system charge that it undermines the patient-physician relationship by substituting a stranger for a patient’s familiar doctor and increasing the likelihood of miscommunication, especially during admission and discharge. As Dr. Richard Gundermann writes in the New England Journal of Medicine, “The patient-physician relationship is built largely on trust, and levels of trust are usually lower among strangers.”

Another concern Gundermann notes is the tendency of hospitalists to lose their outpatient skills over time. By sharing both hospitalist and Chico Pediatrics duties, Ogbeide and Robertson avoid that possibility.

They also appreciate that they serve as backups to each other. When one is ill or on vacation, the other can fill in. Adding to this sense of security is the presence of Dr. Amy Dolinar, a full-time pediatric hospitalist at Enloe who works closely with Ogbeide and Robertson. This backup system alleviates one of the perennial dangers facing physicians—overworking.

Another advantage of the system, Ogbeide points out, is that it makes life easier for pediatricians and family doctors who are located in the underserved small towns in Enloe’s service area, such as Willows and Orland. Now that Enloe provides hospitalist services, outlying doctors don’t have to drive to Chico to make rounds. They know their patients are in good hands.

Drs. Ogbeide and Robertson both have impressive credentials and interesting backgrounds.

Ogbeide was born and reared in Nigeria, where she trained as an optometrist before relocating to the United States in 2003. She graduated from Cal State San Bernardino in 2008 and obtained her M.D. degree in 2013 from Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tenn. She then completed a pediatric internship and residency training program at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio—one of the nation’s premier pediatrics residency training programs.

Ogbeide and her husband moved to Chico in 2017, soon after she completed her residency. They have four children—three boys and a girl—ranging in age from 2 to 14. Ogbeide reports that they have adjusted well to life in a smaller city, with the older kids getting involved in organized soccer and basketball.

The Ogbeide kids certainly have made an impression on Asarian. In a note added to their mother’s web bio, he enthuses: “Her three older children are absolutely awesome! It is too soon for me to characterize her toddler son other than he is very cute and active.”

Robertson is a recent arrival, having moved to Chico with her husband and two German shepherds only about a month ago. Before Chico, they lived in Arcata, where she worked for two years at that town’s Open Door Community Health Center, a federally qualified clinic established to serve primarily Medi-Cal patients.

She’s an East Coaster, having grown up in New York City, where she lived for more than 20 years. She graduated from Hunter College magna cum laude, with a degree in creative writing and concentrations in mathematics and chemistry—an unusual combination, to say the least.

Her exploration of the medical world continued at the New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine, where she earned a master’s degree in neuromusculoskeletal science. Her focus was on early childhood head trauma and its long-reaching effects into geriatric age.

From there she jumped to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Southern California. Today she is board certified in pediatric medicine, having practiced primary care at a Kaiser hospital in Los Angeles and at Open Door in Arcata.

Finally, after 13 years of intense preparatory training, she is settled in Chico and eager to welcome her patients.