LIE Contemporary Award

Kimon Bekelis, MD

Dr. Bekelis is a fellowship-trained neurosurgeon with subspecialty training in minimally invasive endovascular neurosurgery. He additionally specializes in Gamma Knife Radiosurgery, and complex spine, and brain operations. Dr. Bekelis is the Chairman of Neurointerventional Services for Catholic Health Services of Long Island (CHSLI) and the Director of the Stroke and Brain Aneurysm Center of Excellence in Good Samaritan Hospital Medical Center (GSHMC).

He is also the Director of the Population Health Research Institute of New York at CHS and an Assistant Professor at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. After finishing his medical school education, he spent a year as a postdoctoral research fellow in neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He completed his neurosurgery residency at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, where he served as the chief resident, and his fellowship in cerebrovascular and endovascular neurosurgery at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, one of the largest comprehensive stroke centers in the country.

He has led several research projects focusing on outcome predictive modeling, resource utilization, regional disparities, diffusion of innovation, intensity of care, workforce allocation, medicolegal issues, and cost. Dr. Bekelis is the author of over 130 peer reviewed journal publications, and 10 book chapters. He has developed two software applications on risk prediction, and has received funding support from the Congress of Neurological Surgeons (CNS), the Hitchcock Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health. His work has been honored with the Dandy Award, the Scoville award, the Robert Florin award, the Sam Hassenbusch Award, the Stroke Care in Emergency Medicine Award and the Stroke and Brain Aneurysm Award by the American Heart/Stroke Association, the CNS Foundation Innovation Fellowship Award, and the first place of the socioeconomic category at a recent American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) meeting. He recently led the research team that produced the Dartmouth Atlas national report on the treatment of cerebral aneurysms and developed a website highlighting the diffusion of stroke care in the United States. He is a reviewer for multiple scientific journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, The British Medical Journal, and Health Affairs.

Dr. Bekelis is well respected by his peers. He holds multiple leadership positions in several national committees in stroke, neurocritical care and neurosurgery. These include the AANS Development Committee, the Joint Guidelines Committee (which develops guidelines on stroke care among others), the QOD (the first national neurosurgery outcomes registry for stroke), the National Quality Forum, and others. While still a resident, he was voted in the AANS Young Neurosurgeons Committee after national elections, and he was selected as a Council of State Neurosurgical Societies (CSNS) fellow (the health policy organization of neurosurgery), and subsequently as the fellow to the prestigious AANS/CNS Washington Committee, which focuses on health policy, management, advocacy, and legislative reform. Dr. Bekelis was elected as the 2016 Health Policy Scholar by the American College of Surgeons, and as a member of one of the Governing Councils of the American Medical Associations. Most recently he was elected as the 2018 Leadership in Healthcare fellow by the CNS.

Further information on Dr. Bekelis can be found at www.kimonbekelis.com.