Gastroenterologist
Tryon Medical Partners

“The patient-doctor relationship is very important to me. I enjoy personal encounters with my patients and families. Those relationships are key to leading successful, jointly developed plans to improve symptoms and long-term health.

Medicine is not only a part of my life, but also my wife’s who works as a nurse. We have three children. We have a daughter at Myers Park High School, another daughter at UNC-Chapel Hill and a son at the University of Georgia. Outside of the office, I love golf and cheering on the Charlotte Hornets.”

Tryon Medical Partners is a new company performed by the exit of nearly 100 physicians as part of a multispecialty group from Atrium Health, formerly Carolinas healthcare system. Our group includes internal medicine physicians, gastroenterologists, endocrinologists, cardiologists, rheumatologists, dermatologists, sleep medicine physicians, and pulmonologists. Tryon Medical Partners is in the process of initiating clinical research programs and most all of these clinical specialties.

My background stems from 14 years at Johns Hopkins medical school and hospital where I completed an MD and a PhD degree. My PhD degree was actually in neuroscience-basic science rather than clinical research. However I was involved in translational research during that time. I also completed my residency in internal medicine and my fellowship in gastroenterology as well as a postdoctoral research fellowship at Johns Hopkins. Subsequently, I joined the faculty at Vanderbilt medical school and Medical Center. While there, I became the interim director of the GI division as well as director of clinical research.

Now that our group of doctors at Tryon Medical Partners has recently become independent, we have taken an interest in developing a significant clinical research program. Within gastroenterology we are participating in multiple clinical trials involving reflux disease, eosinophilic esophagitis and gastritis, Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, hereditary hemochromatosis and others. I am a principal investigator on several of the studies. This program is new and in fact has been delayed in its start up, somewhat, because of the COVID-19 pandemic.