Sheldon Berkowitz, MD, FAAP has recently retired after a 38-year career as a Pediatrician (having done both Primary Care and Hospitalist work) and an 8-year career as Medical Director (Physician Advisor) for Case Management, Utilization Management, and Clinical Documentation Improvement (CDI) at Children’s Minnesota, which is a free-standing, tertiary children’s hospital serving the upper Midwest. He had worked at Children’s since 2001 and in July 2014 was asked to be Children’s first Physician Advisor and to help develop the program.
In his role as Medical Director (name change in 2016 to reflect the broader responsibilities in the job), he supported the hospital’s inpatient case managers in assessing admission status as well as assisting in discharge planning when barriers were encountered. In addition, he handled all insurance denials for inpatient status or lack of medical necessity and was successful in getting the majority of those overturned. He also supported the CDI department in getting clinicians to answer documentation queries as well as helping to develop documentation guidelines (e.g. Acute Respiratory Failure and Malnutrition). Finally, he co-chaired the Utilization Management Committee as it oversaw all issues of utilization.
Dr. Berkowitz has lectured nationally on various topics dealing with case management and CDI. He is also a Clinical Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Minnesota.
Dr. Berkowitz has a long-standing interest in Bioethics and was a member of the hospital’s Ethics committee for over 34 years and has written and lectured on various Ethics topics both locally and nationally. Dr. Berkowitz is the Past President of the Minnesota Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.