Dr. Kourtney Kemp, Dr. Aaron D. Rutzick, Dr. Nabeel Azeem, and Dr. Jessica Thomes Pepin
This is the sixth edition of our Top Doctors: Rising Stars list—physicians who have been fully licensed to practice for approximately 10 years or less. This list includes 436 doctors in 46 specialties.
When compiling any list of this nature, research is essential. We ask physicians to nominate one or more doctors (excluding themselves) they would go to if they were seeking medical care. From there, we group candidates into 46 specialties and evaluate on myriad factors, including (but not limited to) peer recognition, professional achievement, and disciplinary history. We invite doctors who have the highest scores from each grouping to serve on a blue-ribbon panel that evaluates the other candidates. In the end, only doctors who earn the highest point total from the surveys, research, and blue-ribbon panel review are selected as Mpls.St.Paul Magazine’s 2020 Top Doctors: Rising Stars.
Of course, no list is perfect. Many qualified doctors who are providing excellent care to their patients do not appear on this year’s list. However, if you’re looking for exceptional physicians who have earned the confidence and high regard of their peers, you can start your search here. In addition to being featured on the list you find here, this year’s group of Rising Stars will join a prestigious group of doctors from more than 20 cities around the country who have been selected to Super Doctors, the full list of which you can find at superdoctors.com.
>>See the full list of 2020 Rising Stars here.
Dr. Kourtney Kemp
Dr. Kourtney Kemp
Finding a new way to fix hernias and reflux
Dr. Kourtney Kemp specializes in robotic reflux surgery and robotic surgery for hernias. Being able to communicate well with all her patients is a top priority for Kemp. In fact, she’s learning a new language so that she can converse with her Mandarin-speaking patients. “I understand some Spanish,” she says. “But Mandarin is one of the largest languages in the world right now. So I thought it would be beneficial for me to at least learn some medical Mandarin and connect with patients.”
What intrigues you about your field?
It’s all about fixing holes. Hernias are essentially holes that can occur anywhere, such as the abdominal wall. You can see it, you can feel it, you can fix it. With reflux surgery it’s very similar. You can’t see a hole, but it’s usually a defect in the diaphragm that’s causing reflux or heartburn, and you can analyze and assess that very specifically.
What do you like about robotic surgery?
Most people know about laparoscopic surgery, but it’s like working with chopsticks. With robotics, you can move the instruments the way your hands do—twist in a circle; move in tiny, little places. It’s almost like your hands are in the body doing the work, but you’re doing it with instruments the size of your pinkie finger.
How has robotics been a game changer for heartburn and reflux procedures?
One of the things we do is tighten up that diaphragm hole because it’s been stretched. Getting up near your diaphragm, working near your heart and your lungs, can be high risk. With small robotic instruments, we decrease risk of organ injury, lung collapse, and heart arrhythmias. In the past, some people who had reflux surgery would have big incisions in their chest, their abdomen; they’d be in the hospital for a five-to-seven-day stay. Now when we use robotics, it’s usually an overnight stay for the same procedure.
What role do diagnostics play in the treatment of reflux disease?
We used to do a lot of trial and error with medications to figure out what worked for people managing the symptoms. Now a lot of the big new changes are in diagnostics—figuring out why they have reflux, how severe it is, and what is the best treatment plan. A lot of my practice is not just surgery but diagnostics of reflux disease. So when people come to my clinic, they get a comprehensive workup. Their best option isn’t always surgery.
What is it?
Sometimes it can involve changing the pattern of taking medications and diet and lifestyle management changes. Sometimes it’s just education around their disease.
Where do you see your field evolving?
We’re doing a lot of surgery optimization clinics: How do we get people in the best possible shape in preparation for surgery, both mentally and physically? Regarding reflux, it’s trying to get people off medications that aren’t necessarily needed and doing that in a very safe way, but also getting people through the diagnostic process to know why, how, and if they should be on medication.
"We’re not just surgeons that operate. We actually do diagnostic testing, and we’re trying to prevent surgeries or prevent patients from developing disease that leads to surgery.”
—Dr. Kourtney Kemp, General Surgeon, Specialists in General Surgery
Dr. Aaron D. Rutzick
Dr. Aaron D. Rutzick
Coordinating a Community of Care
Dr. Aaron Rutzick has spent his entire career at Hennepin Healthcare, where he works in the internal medicine clinic as a primary care physician. He also works as a hospitalist, doing rounds, sometimes alone and sometimes accompanied by residents and medical students. Part of his day is also spent at the Coordinated Care Center, a primary care clinic designed for patients with complex health problems that result in frequent hospitalization. He starts each workday with a bike ride from his home in south Minneapolis. “I have a pretty good streak going right now,” he says.
“I haven’t driven to work since November.”
Why did you choose internal medicine?
I like the complexity of the cases. It’s like putting patterns together—patients’ stories and what you see in their physical exams and labs.
What has changed in your field in the last 10 years?
Coordinated Care started in 2010 as the brainchild of Dr. Paul Johnson. It was born out of a project called the CCDS (coordinated care delivery system). After a budget crisis led to cuts in medical assistance for low-income adults, a block grant was given to any hospital or health care system that wanted to take care of these patients. Hennepin identified a cohort of these patients being admitted and readmitted to the hospital over and over again. We wanted to bring them into an easily accessible clinic that would provide a soft landing for them and see if it made a difference. So this clinic was born.
What were the results?
Original pre/post data showed we reduced hospitalizations by 30 percent in this group of people, and we reduced emergency room visits by 25 percent. It was very exciting for me to get involved in this clinic and to see this model of care early on.
Do you have any real-life experiences you’d like to share?
I have a guy now that I was seeing in the Internal Medicine Clinic at Hennepin. He had five admissions to the hospital for COPD in 2017 and three in 2018. After transferring him from the internal medicine clinic to this high-utilizer clinic, he’s had zero admissions as of 2019. He went from eight admissions in two years to zero. That’s a lot of costs to this system and to taxpayers that are saved.
Why do you think the Coordinated Care Center has been so successful?
Sometimes a patient’s life turns around by establishing rapport with the front-desk staff or with the social worker who’s there or with one of the nursing staff. I can roll in and fiddle with someone’s insulin. That takes a minute. It’s about a whole network of personalities and roles that are helping to support these patients. It’s awesome. And I’m psyched to be a part of it.
You have a reputation of being a very caring physician. How do you develop a good rapport with your patients?
I try to not do all the talking, and to let them talk. What people probably want most is to be heard.
"One of my coworkers, who manages all the residents at Hennepin Healthcare, said six out of ten doctors in Minnesota have come through Hennepin at one point to train. I was impressed. That means more than half the MDs in the state have trained here at some point and in some way.”
—Dr. Aaron D. Rutzick, Internal Medicine, Hennepin Healthcare
Dr. Jessica Thomes Pepin
Dr. Jessica Thomes Pepin
Improving Gynecologic Cancer Outcomes
At a young age, Dr. Jessica Thomes Pepin knew she wanted to be a doctor. But she thought it would be in pediatrics. “Growing up, I loved kids, I loved babysitting, taking care of families,” she says. “But when it came down to treating sick kids, I struggled a lot emotionally.” She found her true calling while doing her rotations in obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Minnesota. “We were doing these surgical cases for women with cancer, and we’d be operating until 8 at night and getting home at 9. I was still so energized that I’d go out for a run before I went to bed. That’s when I knew what I was meant to do. I was just so happy.”
What excites you about your field?
I like the intermittent intensity, sort of the complexity of patient care. We provide surgical care and chemotherapy or systemic anticancer care. And the complexity of having to know our chemotherapeutic agents but also the surgical complexity of our cases is incredibly fulfilling and also challenging.
What are the most common patient issues you treat?
The most common reason that a patient comes in is probably one of two—it’s either a pelvic mass, and we’re having to use our knowledge and deduction skills to determine whether or not there’s a preoperative probability of a cancer. And number two is somebody who’s been diagnosed with endometrial cancer. Patients walk into my office with a lot of fear. And we usually have to spend some time going over what everything means and helping them understand that I’ll be there no matter what. That really seems to help a lot.
How has your field changed in recent years?
Improving the adjuvant systemic care of patients with ovarian cancer. Some excellent improvements we’ve seen, particularly over the last five years, have been utilizing medication called a PARP inhibitor and using targeted agents to really home in on specific genetic mutations. We’re seeing what’s called progression-free survival advantages, where patients are living longer in between different chemotherapies. Also, for me personally, the boom of robotic surgery for uterine cancer. Minimally invasive surgical care for women with endometrial cancer was definitely taking over right as I started residency. I operate with the Intuitive surgical da Vinci robot. I’m able to get around small spaces much easier.
Where do you see your field evolving to in the next ten years?
I think we’re right in the middle of a dramatic explosion with systemic options for patients with recurrent disease. The studies and the FDA approvals for systemic treatments that are coming out are just so rapid.
You and your husband, an orthopedic surgeon, just returned from a surgical mission to Honduras with One World Surgery. What was that experience like?
The trip was a big growing experience for us. We were able to care for quite a few people in just a matter of a week. One World Surgery helps providers care for patients who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford it. I did hysterectomies, mostly surgical care for women with fibroids or pelvic masses. [I saw] women who were anemic and getting transfused on a regular basis, or had a mass in their abdomen so severe they were suffering pain or substantial bleeding. It’s nice to know that you’re helping.
"There have been more drugs approved by the FDA for use in the last five to ten years than there were in the two decades prior to that. It’s been an amazing change—and it’s happening right now.”
—Dr. Jessica Thomes Pepin, Gynecologic Oncologist, Minnesota Oncology
Dr. Nabeel Azeem
Dr. Nabeel Azeem
Fixing an Issue Before it’s a Crisis
Growing up in rural eastern Kentucky, Dr. Nabeel Azeem initially wanted to become a pediatric surgeon so he could help care for the children in his home state. However, during his GI rotation in medical school, he became interested in a new field—advanced endoscopy. “You could see even back then—which was 13 years ago—that the field was undergoing a huge explosion and sea change,” he says. “It really sparked my interest.” Today Dr. Azeem treats a wide range of GI disorders. As an interventional endoscopist, Azeem is particularly interested in the endoscopic removal of precancerous or even early cancerous lesions from the esophagus, stomach, small intestine, and colon. He hopes that screening for esophageal cancer will become as commonplace as colonoscopies—and a bit more pleasant.
How has the field of advanced endoscopy evolved?
Over the last 10 years, we’ve seen a huge push in being able to remove really sizable precancerous-type lesions and even early cancer, often endoscopically, without needing surgery. Part of the reason why it’s possible is now we have the technology and the expertise to close perforations in the GI tract and manage complications during the procedure, whereas 15 years ago, if you’d had a complication such as a perforation, it would have been catastrophic. But now it’s something we can treat and manage all during the procedure, and that’s allowed us to push the envelope.
We had a young patient with colon cancer that caused the colon to perforate. The wall of the colon opened, and it created an abscess within the abdomen. Fifteen years ago, that patient might have gone to surgery with an open abdomen and ended up with a colostomy bag. Instead, we were able to drain the abscess back into the colon during a colonoscopy.
What are some other groundbreaking approaches to care?
The big thing nowadays is how we’re treating a rare disease called achalasia, which causes a problem with swallowing due to the end of the esophagus not being able to relax. It used to be traditionally treated with a surgical procedure called Heller myotomy, where they’d have to enter into the abdomen and sometimes the chest, dissect down to the esophagus and stomach, and then cut that muscle that’s not relaxing. About 10 years ago, a Japanese physician named Dr. Inoue and his team in Japan developed a way to do this without any external incisions. Since then, this new technique has had a rapid growth to where now there’s a few thousand patients worldwide that have been treated with it with very high success rates. It’s been transformative for our field and for those patients.
What holds the most promise to transform your field?
We can remove or ablate a lot of precancerous or very early cancerous lesions throughout the GI tract without needing surgery. The problem is we’re not getting to those patients before they develop cancer. For example, most patients with esophageal cancer start out with a precancerous stage called Barrett’s esophagus. It slowly progresses and can potentially become cancer. But that period where they had Barrett’s esophagus would’ve been an opportunity for us to intervene early to prevent that cancer. We need to find ways to reach these patients before they develop cancer, like what we do for screening colonoscopies, which is highly effective because it prevents colon cancers by identifying and removing precancerous polyps. There are a number of things that are being studied. For example, when it comes to esophageal cancer and Barrett’s esophagus, there’s a sponge/collection device that’s being looked at that a patient will swallow like a capsule. It’s attached to a string and collects cells. Potentially, even a primary care physician could pull it out in their office, and then it gets sent to the lab. It could be an easy five-minute procedure without the need for a referral to a specialist.
"Another thing that’s being looked at is exhaled volatile organic compounds. Some early cancers or precancers give off certain compounds into the air, and if patients breathe them out, we maybe will be able to detect those just in the breath alone.”
—Dr. Nabeel Azeem, Gastroenterology, M Health Fairview
Editor’s Note: Many of our Top Doctors have specialty certification recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties. This board certification requires substantial additional training in a doctor’s area of practice. We encourage you to discuss this board certification with your doctor to determine its relevance to your medical needs. More information about board certification is available at abms.org.
© 2020 MSP Communications. All rights reserved. Super Doctors® is a registered trademark of MSP Communications. Disclaimer: The information presented is not medical advice, nor is Super Doctors a physician referral service. We strive to maintain a high degree of accuracy in the information provided. We make no claim, promise, or guarantee about the accuracy, completeness, or adequacy of the information contained in the directory. Selecting a physician is an important decision that should not be based solely on advertising. Super Doctors is the name of a publication, not a title or moniker conferred upon individual physicians. No representation is made that the quality of services provided by the physicians listed will be greater than that of other licensed physicians, and past results do not guarantee future success. Super Doctors is an independent publisher that has developed its own selection methodology; it is not affiliated with any federal, state, or regulatory body. Self-designated practice specialties listed in Super Doctors do not imply “recognition” or “endorsement” of any field of medical practice, nor do they imply certification by a Member Medical Specialty Board of the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) or that the physician has competence to practice the specialty. List research concluded February 11, 2020.
