Rachel Vogel
I am a Family Physician at Union Square Family Health and I have provided full spectrum primary care as well as prenatal care, low risk obstetrics and postpartum care at The Cambridge Hospital for the last nine years. I pursued my residency training at Boston Medical Center, an institution that like CHA is dedicated to caring for the most vulnerable patients in the Boston area. I subsequently completed a Maternal Child Health Fellowship at Brown University in order to strengthen my skills in obstetrics, newborn care and teaching. I now regularly teach medical students and residents in a clinical setting, I am a certified instructor for the ALSO course (Advanced Life Support in Obstetrics), and I have completed trainings such as the Teachers of Tomorrow workshop series run by UMass Medical School. I am also a proud recipient of this year’s Tufts School of Medicine “Libby Bradshaw” teaching award. I speak Spanish and Portuguese fluently and I have led prenatal group visits in Portuguese at my site over a number of years.
Since my early years in medicine I have always been passionate about maternity care, caring for underserved patient populations, and teaching. Additionally, in the last few years, I have also taken a strong interest in practice transformation, as I appreciate how quickly our healthcare system is changing and I want to positively affect this change. To this end, I served as the physician leader on Union Square Family Health’s Practice Improvement Team for two years. In this role, I led projects such as an office-wide effort to sign up more patients for MyChart, and planned an all-staff retreat focused on staff wellness and re-connection with the organization’s mission. In addition, I worked to update our office’s late patient policy because disagreement about how to manage late patients was causing significant tension among providers and staff. As a result of this project, we were able to improve our workflow and gain measurable improvements in staff satisfaction. Through all of this work, I learned how important it was to get the input and vision of all stakeholders. Going forward, I want to work on similar projects that dismantle hierarchies, bridge gaps between disciplines, and bring out the voices of both patients and staff members who have previously felt disempowered.
I am excited to work on this upcoming project that will empower vulnerable prenatal patients to take more control of their birth experience. I hope to collaborate with mental health professionals, our nursing colleagues, our doulas and most importantly our patients to accomplish this goal. I also envision that the whole care team will provide safer and more compassionate care when we learn to consistently keep the patient at the center of the care team.
