Program Leadership

Since finishing a Teaching Fellowship at UCSF during her training, Dr. Suthar has been committed to the personal and professional growth of medical students and residents in a wide variety of practice settings.

Dr. Suthar received her medical degree at Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, OR in 2002 after which she completed a residency in Internal Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. In 2006, she accepted a faculty position at the University of Southern California where she worked as an Academic Hospitalist and Ambulatory Care physician. She then went on to be a primary care physician in a group private practice for several years in Southern California, but returned to her passion of academic medicine in 2013 at the University of California, Irvine. There she worked as the Associate Third Year Medicine Clerkship Director and Core Clinical Faculty as well as an Academic Hospitalist.

Dr. Suthar came to Olive-View UCLA in 2015 as a Associate Program Director for the UCLA-Olive View Internal Medicine Residency and became the Program Director in June 2016. Dr. Suthar has been working with Olive-View Internal Medicine leadership to ensure that residents and medical students receive the best evidence-based teaching while using advancing technological and educational methods to promote learning and wellness.

A former resident and chief resident from our program, Dr. Rotblatt is one of our top faculty members (Faculty Role Model and Outstanding Attending awards in 1999 & 2002), and is intimately involved in the educational curricula of the program. With a degree in Pharmacy (UC San Francisco) as well as Medicine (UC Irvine), Dr. Rotblatt brings a unique knowledge of Pharmacology and Pharmaceutics to the program.

Dr. Rotblatt completed a UCLA fellowship in Medical Education in 1996-1997, worked as an academic primary care internist at the Sepluveda VA, and joined the faculty as an Associate Program Director in 2003. He was recently the Chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine (GIM), supervising faculty internists in the inpatient and outpatient settings at Olive View, and is now the Vice-Chair of General Medicine Operations. Dr. Rotblatt is active in the Southern California ACP Region 1 chapter, chairing the annual Poster competition in 2011, 2012 and 2013. He received the ACP Laureate award for professional accomplishments in 2012.

Dr. Rotblatt is an active educator at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, involved in teaching 1st, 2nd, and 3rd year medical students in various classes and experiences over the years, including physical diagnosis and problem-based learning courses. He currently lectures on “Evidence-Based Medicine” in the Medicine Clerkship orientation, and was recently the Medicine Clerkship site director at Olive View.

In addition to teaching students and residents in the clinics and on the wards at Olive View, he participates in didactic education sessions on a variety of diverse topics such as pain management, dyslipidemia, drug interactions, pharmaceutical updates, preop medicine and «teaching & feedback.» He chairs the hospital’s Medication Use Evaluation committee, which tracks all adverse drug events and medication errors in the hospital.

Dr. Rotblatt also has a special interest in herbal medicines, dietary supplements and other CAM disciplines. He co-authored the 2002 book Evidence-Based Herbal Medicine, and has lectured widely on this subject. He has authored a number of book chapters and articles in the medical literature.

Dr. Ta was first drawn to the Program by its excitement for clinical education and service to an underserved population. Serving as Chief Resident during 2014-2015 solidified his personal dedication to make Olive View a place for learning, excellence, and advancement. He now serves as a hospitalist and is actively involved in recruitment and clinical curriculum for residents. He enjoys teaching clinical reasoning in the Medical Education Track and at Morning Report. Additionally he has had extensive involvement in the implementation and training for the electronic health record. Dr. Ta is a graduate of the Honors Program in Medical Education at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. He is an active member of the American College of Physicians. His outside interests include graphic and web design, as can be appreciated by this website and in the Department of Medicine and Hospitalist offices.

Dr. Paul Salama recently joined the Olive View-UCLA Medical Center. He serves as the Director of Quality Improvement for the Department of Medicine. In this role, he works to refine the Quality Improvement curriculum for the residency and to ensure that residents have the support and structure needed to complete their ACGME-mandated Quality Improvement project.

Dr. Salama came to Olive View from the Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center, where he served as an academic hospitalist for eleven years. While there, he founded and directed the Internal Medicine Residency’s Research Track.  Prior to that, he completed Internal Medicine residency at LAC+USC Medical Center after earning his doctorate degree from the Emory University School of Medicine.

Besides his efforts revolving around Quality Improvement, Dr. Salama is also very interested in epidemiology and evidence-based medicine, and is currently completing a Master’s degree in that area at Harvard University.  He also has special interest in enhancing and advancing methodologies related to undergraduate and graduate medical education.