Upland-based physician Dr. Romeo Jamil Samouh is this year’s Optimal Care Award winner, receiving the recognition at Inland Empire Health Plan’s (IEHP) 2024 Mission Conference held May 3.
Dr. Samouh shaped his practice around the basis of compassion, working with his staff to create a welcoming environment centered around whole person care. His goal is to provide a relaxing environment for those complex conversations and allow room to lessen anxiety associated with talking to a primary care physician for the first time or the hundredth.
“Some of the challenges of supporting the underserved is working with individuals who may not speak English,” he said. “But my staff and I speak their native [tongue] which helps facilitate access to care and educating them on their chronic conditions.”
Health plan leaders presented four Living The Mission Awards at the conference, each with its own meaning and IEHP mission-centric selection criteria. Of the four, the Optimal Care Award is the only recognition selected internally by the health plan’s Quality Team, which used quality-based criteria, such as clinical outcome and member experience data, to determine the winner. This is demonstrated by:
- Clinical care and outcomes that exceed national benchmarks and consistently follow best practice.
- Care that is seamlessly coordinated from prevention from across the whole care continuum.
- Care that is built on cultural humility and respectful, holistic, human-centered experiences.
“I came back [to the area] to serve my community [and] make a meaningful impact by doing something that’s very rewarding,” Dr. Samouh said. “It hits home to me because my personal story of being an immigrant coming from the Middle East when I was six years old and having to really struggle growing up.”
To learn more about Dr. Samouh and his practice, go to www.samouhfamilypractice.com. For highlights of the 2024 Mission Conference, visit missionconference.iehp.org or follow IEHP on social media.