John Bucuvalas, MD

John Bucuvalas, MD is the Chief of the Division of Hepatology and Vice Chair of Faculty Affairs in the Jack and Lucy Clark Department of Pediatrics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the Mount Sinai Kravis Children's Hospital. He also serves as the Director of Solid Organ Transplant Outreach for the Recanati/Miller Transplantation Institute (RMTI) at Mount Sinai. In addition, he is a part of the Metabolic Genetics Group that treats pediatric patients with inherited disorders of metabolism. The group consists of doctors and specialists from the Division of Medical Genetics and Genomics, the Recanati Miller Transplantation Institute (RMTI), the Division of Pediatric Hepatology, and the Division of Pediatric Nephrology and Hypertension. He graduated from Harvard College, Magna Cum Laude in biology and then obtained his medical degree at Harvard Medical School. He completed his pediatric residency including a year as Chief Resident before his gastroenterology fellowship at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. He is board certified in pediatric gastroenterology with a certificate of added qualification in transplant hepatology. He advanced to Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Cincinnati and served as Director of the Integrated Solid Organ Transplant Program before coming to Mount Sinai Hospital.

CLINICAL: Dr. Bucuvalas’ primary clinical focus is transplant hepatology, recognized by the American Board of Internal Medicine and American Board of Pediatric as a discipline with distinct body of knowledge by a certificate of adequate qualification. He serves as the attending physician on the inpatient liver service and care for outpatients with acute and chronic liver disease.

PERSONAL STATEMENT: My goal is for children with liver disease to live full, meaningful lives. I have been fortunate to experience and be part of the tremendous innovations in care for children with complex and serious liver disease. When I started my career, children with serious liver disease had few options and many died before the age of 5 years. Now, we have medical and surgical treatments including liver transplantation that have revolutionized our approach. Along the way, I established collaborations and relationships with clinical and research leaders both inside and outside the United States.  I have been equally fortunate with the opportunity to integrate these efforts with learnings from other industries. In 2002, I underwent training in improvement science, which, in turn, combined with my traditional research training gave me the tools to meet my goal. Through learning from patient and family experience and collaborations with colleagues outside of medicine at MIT, Harvard Business School and with urban architects, I gained a better understanding of how we can use privacy, transparency, team effectiveness, communication and decision-making to make care better. Throughout my career, I have better recognized the value of diverse expertise, and it helped to guide my approach towards care and research.