Patients Ask Doctors. Doctors Ask Dr. Hussain

him. “No problem, I can wait,” Dr. Usmani said. They eventually joined forces and ran a highly successful practice until early 2018, when they decided to merge with Garden State Medical Center.

There were two major benefits to joining GSMC. For one thing, everything is electronic here for easy access: data, records, and charts are all in one place. That means they can spend less time doing paperwork and more time getting you better.

Second, they could team up with Dr. Dharam Mann and his gifted team of pain management specialists. The idea of having everything under one roof was huge to Dr. Hussain. Before the merger, “I’d see a patient here, and then I’d say, ‘Okay go get pain management forty miles away.’” Sometimes this would result in a disconnect in treatment strategy, or patients understandably didn’t want to do all that traveling. But now he’ll come to a diagnosis and say, for example, “Dr. Jani is next door. I know him, I’ll talk to him.” All of his notes are right on the database, along with Dr. Jani’s, so they can easily coordinate the best way to care for you.

“I’ll send them and in the next few days they are being seen,” by one of the pain management specialists. No more bouncing around for a month just to go from diag- nosis to treatment. With the full force of GSMC behind him, Dr. Hussain has pulled off some great feats. “It’s very gratifying in this field when you see patients doing well, because these diseases are hard to treat,” he pointed out. One woman had rashes head to toe and had been to five or six other rheumatologists before Dr. Hussain. She had only recently been diagnosed with skin lupus, but treatment wasn’t working. The key would be to figure out anything besides the lupus that might be triggering the rashes. Sun exposure was an obvious cause, but Dr. Hussain was able to lean heavily on his allergy training in immunology to dig deeper on things like perfumes and shampoos. After six months of careful consideration and communication with the patient, they were able to get the rashes down to 10 percent of their former surface area. A great improvement, but not perfect. Dr. Hussain found a new infusion that had just been approved by the FDA. The only problem: it cost $20,000 every four weeks. His office fought hard for the patient to get it approved with her insurance, and then they began treatment. In three months, there was not one spot left on her body. “She literally sat and cried and cried and said, ‘Oh my God, I’ve lived with this for so long. I thought I was go- ing to die with this.’ So now she’s still rash-free. She’s in complete remission,” and only has to take one medication per day.

Rashes aren’t the only thing Dr. Hussain treats either. Rheumatology can concern all of the major bodily systems in one way or another. Regardless of what you’re feeling, he is prepared to talk to you and give you a hand. Feel free to schedule an appointment with Dr. Hussain today at 1100 NJ Route 70, Entrance A in Whiting or 2333 Whitehorse Mercerville Road in Hamilton by calling 1-888-376-2661. Visit gsmedicalcenter.org anytime to get more information on all of the services Garden State Medical Center provides.