Georganne's a physician with the expertise you need to overcome the barriers to access, receive and pay for quality care.

Georganne Vartorella, MD is a board certified physician of internal medicine and a leader in patient advocacy. After a successful private practice in primary care, she advocated for both her parents through long, difficult terminal illnesses. While traveling her mother's end of life journey, Georganne experienced first-hand how broken the healthcare delivery system had become and how difficult it was to access and optimize quality care, get it paid for and ensure her mother's values, needs and goals were honored. Perceiving these lessons learned as an opportunity for positive change, Dr. Vartorella focused her experience, medical expertise and medical knowledge of the way the system works on patient advocacy full time and, in 2016, founded Patient Advocacy MD., LLC. Patient Advocacy MD provides a wide range of advocacy services not only to families and patients but to organizations as well, including healthcare systems, concierge healthcare providers, human resource teams, employers managing healthcare benefits, insurance providers and brokers, and law firms with multiple areas of expertise and specialty. "Between all of the groups that deliver and pay for healthcare there is, all too often, a lack of coordination, communication and information sharing," Dr. Vartorella says. "In exceptional situations that fall outside of the standard care pathways-which are not uncommon-the diagnosis, treatment and wishes of patients become obscured by the complex process itself." The mission of Patient Advocacy MD is to bridge those gaps, meet those needs, reduce risk and build necessary trust. In addition to her work as an advocate, Dr. Vartorella has been a member of the Ohio Task Force Coalition Leadership Team, in partnership with the Coalition to Transform Advanced Care. Dr. Vartorella helped lead efforts to build an Ohio coalition, working with community and state legislators, to address the needs and remove barriers to access quality care and ensure equitable care and quality of life for the seriously ill. She also served as chair of the executive board of an Ohio non-profit that assisted vulnerable populations access quality care and health insurance. In 2021, Dr. Vartorella was appointed to Georgetown University's Board of Regents. Currently, she is a member of the National Patient Advocate Foundation, Collier County Medical Society and serves on the Board of Directors for the Northern Ohio Italian American Association, a non profit organization that includes members who are distinguished area leaders in business, the community and philanthropy. Dr. Vartorella is a graduate of Georgetown University and Georgetown University Medical School. Following a one year residency in Pathology at the University of Pennsylvania, she competed her residency in internal medicine at the University of Pennsylvania's Pennsylvania Hospital. During her years in private practice, Dr. Vartorella was an adjunct instructor for Case Western Reserve University at Metro General Hospital in Cleveland. More recently, she received a Patient Advocacy Certification with Distinction from UCLA.

Complex & Catastrophic Diagnoses

Chronic Conditions

Care Coordination