Dr.Jasmine Sulaiman-Indian American ; America Family Physician of the Year 2013

Texas Doc of the Year 2016 is Indian American - Dr.Jasmine Sulaiman

 FORT WORTH, TEXAS —

 Jasmine Sulaiman, M.D., of Cleveland, Texas, has been awarded the highest honor among family doctors in Texas by the Texas Academy of Family Physicians. Dr. Sulaiman was named the 2013 Texas Family Physician of the Year during TAFP’s Annual Session and Scientific Assembly in Fort Worth on Aug. 3. Each year, patients and physicians nominate extraordinary family physicians throughout Texas, and a panel of TAFP members chooses one as the Family Physician of the Year.

Since 2006, Dr. Sulaiman has been the medical director of the Health Center of Southeast Texas, a federally qualified health center, and since 2008 the associate medical director of Compassionate Care Hospice, both in Cleveland, Texas. Prior to these positions, she held various practitioner positions around the state of New York. After completing her education in India and Saudi Arabia, she completed her residency with the Bassett Elizabeth Family Medicine Program at Columbia University and post graduate training at the University of North Carolina and Duke University.

Among other community organizations, Dr. Sulaiman is active in Hard Hats for Little Heads, a head injury awareness program run by the Texas Medical Association, and Tar Wars, a national tobacco prevention program. She also works with multiple patient education programs concerning immigrant and refugee populations.

Her nominators specifically identified her compassion for her patients and willingness to spend time getting to know more about them than just their medical charts. One patient, a 12-year-old, described Dr. Sulaiman in her nomination letter as “loving” and “not selfish,” saying that “she loves checking my grades, lectures me about my love life and schooling.” She is often mentioned as a great teacher, mentor, and friend, always ready to care for those who would not otherwise receive health care.

 Her humility was apparent at the awards lunch, saying that she doesn’t “do anything different than any of you other family physicians,” in her acceptance speech. She follows “dharmo rakshati rakshitah” on a daily basis, explaining it to mean “you protect ethics, ethics will protect you.”

Criteria for the TAFP Physician of the Year award requires that candidates be compassionately dedicated to their patients; active in their communities; and act as a credible, invaluable role model as TAFP Communications | Page 2 a professional in the science and art of medicine. The Texas Academy of Family Physicians is honored to name Dr. Jasmin Sulaiman the 2013-2014 Family Physician of the Year.

The Texas Academy of Family Physicians is the premier membership organization dedicated to uniting the family doctors of Texas through advocacy, education and member services, and empowering them to provide a medical home for patients of all ages. It has 33 local chapters and is a chapter of the American Academy of Family Physicians.
Visit www.tafp.org for more information. \

Texas Doc of the Year Builds Rural Care Network

John Commins, March 2, 2016

Jasmine Sulaiman, MD, started a rural clinic in an old flower shop a decade ago. Today she supervises four clinics covering a three-county service area. The next goal she's set for herself: Improve access to mental healthcare through a tele-psychiatry program.

When Jasmine Sulaiman, MD, was interviewing for a job as the only primary care physician at the nascent Health Center of Southeast Texas, she couldn't help but look toward the heavens for guidance.

That's because there was no roof on the Cleveland, TX bank where the interview took place. It was 2005 and Hurricane Rita had just blown through the small town of 7,707 souls located 45 miles north-northeast of Houston.

Coming from Ivy League-affiliated St. Elizabeth's Medical Center in Utica, New York, and with a family practice specialty, Sulaiman, 54, knew she could have her pick of jobs in physician-starved rural Texas, where she and her husband had relocated to escape winter's grip.

She picked Cleveland, where the local hospital was in financial straits (it closed in 2014), and where she hired on as the sole physician, earning considerably less than the market could demand, and working at a health center that as yet didn't exist. The hospital served a patient mix that included 70% uninsured.

"I was interviewed by a group of people all from the community," she says. "They formed a board to start a clinic because the hospital was losing a lot of money through the ER. This is one of the poorest counties in Texas. When I came, they held hands, about 10 of them, and they prayed, and I was thinking 'OK, I really want to be here and see if I can make it work.'"

"They didn't have a clinic. Actually, they didn't have anything. They had one person from the hospital to help set up the clinic," Sulaiman says. "I said 'OK. I'm going to take this job.' My husband said 'it's a 40-mile drive.' I said 'I don't mind. I want to take this job.'"

Within a few months, a clinic opened in a converted flower shop. Sulaiman began seeing 40 patients a day, and remained on call 24/7 as the center's sole physician. Not surprisingly, the federally qualified Health Center of Southeast Texas quickly grew to meet the urgent demand. Today it includes seven physician assistants and nurse practitioners, all of whom rotated through her practice during their training. The center moved out of the flower shop and now operates in a 6,300-sq.-ft. building with nine exam rooms.

But that's not all.

In addition, HCST expanded to include three additional clinics in a three-county service area, all supervised by Sulaiman, who also continues to see patients in addition to her administrative tasks. She also created a program to upgrade medical care at the county jail, led the movement to designate HCST as a Level 2 Patient Centered Medical Home, helped develop an educational program that exposes local high school students to careers in healthcare, and volunteers once a year to provide free care in Mexico.