New Division Chief Evelyn Hsu, MD, Brings Big Changes to Gastroenterology/Hepatology

Evelyn Hsu

Seattle Children’s is pleased to announce that Dr. Evelyn Hsu accepted the position of division chief of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, following a year as acting division chief and a very competitive national search. She also has served as program director of the Transplant Hepatology Fellowship and medical director for Liver Transplantation.

“I’m excited to join this group in an official capacity. My priority is to expand our staff and open up our services to care for more children in our region, while implementing a service model that allows us to scale up in size while continuing to provide excellent care.,” says Hsu.

Growing the GI/Hepatology Staff

Alongside Dr. Nicole Pattamanuch as the director of the General Diagnostic Gastroenterology Clinical Center and Dr. Ghassan Wahbeh as clinical medical director, Hsu intends for GI to resume seeing children for GERD, constipation and abdominal pains as soon as March 2021. Seattle Children’s had temporarily stopped seeing nonurgent patients with those conditions last year after a severe appointment backlog followed the departure of several providers. Since then, the division has aggressively hired more providers, even during the pandemic, and improved its capacity for services in endoscopy, hepatology and functional GI disorders. The team also created new algorithms and other resources to assist PCPs in seeing these conditions in primary care.

New providers hired in 2020 included:

• Padade Vue (February 2020) – General GI provider (North Clinic focused)
• Jessica Lee (July 2020) – General Pediatrics provider
• Michael Pickens (starting March 2021) – General GI provider (Main, Bellevue, Federal Way)
• Nayab Hussain, PA-C (July 2020) – General GI and motility provider (Seattle and South Clinic focused)
• Lauren Rotkis, ARNP, DNP (September 2020) – General GI provider (South Clinic focused)

Next month, Dr. Michael Pickens will join the GI team. He hails from Oklahoma but before that worked in the Puget Sound region at Mary Bridge for many years. He will co-direct Seattle Children’s aerodigestive program and see patients for general diagnostic gastroenterology and aerodigestive issues at our clinics in Bellevue and Federal Way. The GI division is also in the process of hiring additional providers to provide advanced endoscopy, general diagnostic gastroenterology, and hepatology services.

A New Service Model for GI/Hep

Under Hsu’s leadership, the division has been reshaped to have a fully diagnostic GI group at its center and a new group of clinical care centers for General Diagnostic Gastroenterology, IBD, and Liver and Intestinal Failure. Subspecialties such as liver transplant, IBD, celiac, motility and feeding programs are being restructured to allow growth and provide standard support for clinical care, advocacy and education.

Offering services with these teams of care will improve our standards of care and allow us to support families better with more wraparound services and better care coordination. GI continues to see patients at the hospital and its regional clinics in Everett, Bellevue, Federal Way, Olympia and the Tri-Cities.

Equity and Inclusion

Hsu is leading and growing the GI and Hepatology division in step with the hospital’s value of equity. “One of our highest principles is of equity and anti-racism. We continue to be deeply committed to recruiting a diverse provider group to better reflect the patients we’re seeing.”

About Dr. Hsu

Hsu is a pediatric gastroenterologist and transplant hepatologist, a clinical researcher and advocate with a specialization in pediatric liver allocation. She has been on faculty at the University of Washington School of Medicine and Seattle Children’s since 2011. She established the Transplant Hepatology Fellowship Program in 2014, at the time the eighth such program in the nation, and in 2017 became the medical director of Liver Transplantation.

She is deeply committed to the education and mentorship of fellows and residents in the area of pediatric gastroenterology and hepatology, has been a member of the Intern Retreat Committee since 2012 and was the recipient of the Outstanding Faculty Teaching Award in 2013.

She is a passionate advocate for children and has led collaborative efforts to improve pediatric priority in national organ allocation, successfully changing U.S. policy last year that allowed pediatric candidates on the liver waitlist to have priority nationally for deceased donor organs from children.

Hsu is the current chair of the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) Pediatric Transplantation Committee and is the president-elect of the Society for Pediatric Liver Transplantation (SPLIT), where she has served as chair of the Education Committee, and was the founding chair of the Advocacy Committee. She has received funding from NIH and Seattle Children’s Research Institute.