{"id":42617,"date":"2024-05-23T08:54:11","date_gmt":"2024-05-23T15:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/samhealth.org\/?page_id=42617"},"modified":"2025-03-21T12:05:38","modified_gmt":"2025-03-21T19:05:38","slug":"meet-roheet-kakaday","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/samhealth.org\/careers-education\/find-a-job\/meet-roheet-kakaday\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet Roheet Kakaday"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\t\tMeet Roheet Kakaday, MD<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFamily Medicine<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/h1>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n
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Physician\u2019s Informatics Background Benefits Samaritan<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As the new associate medical director for Clinical Informatics, Roheet Kakaday, MD, has a passionate curiosity for how technology can make health care better for patients and more efficient for providers. It\u2019s a role he will split half time with his practice at Samaritan Walk-In Clinic \u2014 Geary Street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This dual position is new at Samaritan, one prioritized by the medical group to support digital strategy and clinical practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since he started in October, Kakaday has met with clinicians across the system to hear their concerns about Epic and other tech issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cProjects I\u2019m working on are pretty wide ranging, from updating order sets in Epic to brainstorming how to incorporate artificial intelligence to help providers spend less time writing notes and more time with patients,\u201d said Dr. Kakaday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Growing up in Silicon Valley, Dr. Kakaday can\u2019t remember a time when technology wasn\u2019t part of his everyday life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was just part of the conversation, at school, the dinner table, everywhere, and I was very interested in it all,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That fascination led him to University of California San Diego and an undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering. During his sophomore year, he took a volunteer role at a hospital, hoping to find the next big biomedical engineering idea that would launch him into a wealthy early retirement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, he discovered something new about himself \u2013 he felt lit up by helping patients, a discovery confirmed when he later spent a month at a leprosy colony in rural India, helping to treat patient wounds while listening to their stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t think I was a people person, but I really liked sitting with patients, hearing their stories and finding ways to help them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After that, medical school seemed inevitable and off he went to Oregon Health & Science University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEven though I was tunneled into the world of biology at that time, there was also part of me wondering how tech could help with this problem, how software could help that one,\u201d Kakaday noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he discovered the field of clinical informatics it was another big ah-ha moment for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMuch like the role of a primary care doctor to take a wholistic view of a patient\u2019s situation, an informaticist uses technology to look at the symptoms someone is having and then zooms out to look at their workflow to better understand the root cause,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus, he sees his two roles with Samaritan as complementary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBecause I\u2019m practicing clinically, I get to experience the symptoms I\u2019m trying to diagnose,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most recently, Dr. Kakaday completed a two-year fellowship and master\u2019s degree in clinical informatics at OHSU, where he learned processes and tools that can help Samaritan. He sees a spirit of innovation at SHS and a commitment on the part of leadership to make clinicians\u2019 lives easier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo we can provide fantastic patient care without wanting to throw our laptops out the window,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Kakaday and his wife Sonyia, also a family medicine provider, will continue to live in Portland, their home of 10 years. He is undeterred by the commute a few times a week to the Willamette Valley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI essentially have traveled up and down I-5 my entire life,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He and Sonyia enjoy biking around town or on gravel paths, as well as regular high-intensity interval training workouts. A self-proclaimed foodie and chef, his signature dish is pizza, which he crafts from his own 72-hour fermented dough, homemade marinara and carefully prepared toppings, a detailed process he calls \u201ca production,
but really worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy friends tell me they\u2019d pay for this pizza, so my backup plan, in case this doctoring stuff doesn\u2019t work out, is to open a pizzeria,\u201d he said with a laugh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is eager to make an impact at Samaritan and feels he has come full circle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne of my first rotations as a med student was in rural family medicine, working underneath Dr. Rick Wopat at the Lebanon Family Medicine clinic,\u201d he said. \u201cMy extracurricular project was informatics related, creating an onboarding guide to help new med students get oriented to Epic in the clinic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Wopat also wrote a letter of recommendation helping Roheet get into his family medicine residency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn a very real way, I owe both my journey in family medicine and informatics to Samaritan,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n\t<\/section>\n\n\n\n

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Open the Door to New Possibilities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Looking for a new job? From housekeeping to nursing and accounting to managing, there are a lot of opportunities to explore at Samaritan Health Services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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General Job Openings<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Provider Job Openings<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n<\/div>\n\t<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Associate medical director for Clinical Informatics, Roheet Kakaday, MD, has a passionate curiosity for health care technology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"parent":56,"menu_order":6,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_searchwp_excluded":"","_shs_workflow_notes":"","_shs_exclude_from_navigation":true,"_shs_promote_article_on_blogs":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-42617","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/samhealth.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/42617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/samhealth.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/samhealth.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samhealth.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samhealth.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/samhealth.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/42617\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samhealth.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/56"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/samhealth.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}