By Jill Nagy

Dr. Michael Holland heads a medical team headquartered at Saratoga Hospital that looks after the medical needs of companies and their employees. From modest beginnings as company doctors, occupational medicine, Dr. Holland’s specialty, has developed into a board-certified field of medicine.

Dr. Holland began his medical career as an emergency room physician but, during off hours, the emergency room also served as the hospital’s occupational health office. After 18 years in the emergency room, and with a young family, he no longer wanted to work nights and weekends. Therefore, he undertook another residency and, since 1994, has been an occupational medicine specialist.

His field aims to meet the health and safety needs of business customers. Services include pre-employment examinations to make sure a candidate can do the job safely. He checks for illicit drug use, but also for such things as the ability to use a respirator mask for a job that requires one. For bus drivers, Dr. Holland assures that they can meet federal and New York State requirements. Basically, Dr. Holland explained, he tries to assure that  a prospective employee will not be a danger to himself or others. 

When a work site is experiencing large numbers of injuries, an occupational health specialist can come to the workplace, look at the job and the people who perform it, try to determine the causes of the excess of injuries, and prescribe possible remedies.

The Saratoga Hospital Family Medicine Residency Program, a collaboration with Albany Medical Center and Hudson Headwaters Health Network, has successfully “matched” its second class of six medical residents who will begin their three-year residency training on July 1. Six inaugural residents launched the program in 2023, and six are added to the residency each year, with a goal of 18 total residents by 2025.

 Match results were announced by the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) on March 15. The Class of 2027 family medicine residents are:

• Marie Chin Day, MD – Dr. Francisco Q. Duque Medical Foundation College of Medicine, Philippines.

• Meghan Pentak, MD – American University of Antigua College of Medicine.

• Farhan Rana, MD – Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland – Medical University of Bahrain.

• Marina Rozik, MD – St. Matthew’s University School of Medicine, Cayman Islands.

• Troy Selvaratnam, MD – St. George’s University School of Medicine.

• Ankit Singh, MD – College of Medical Sciences, Bharatpur, Nepal.

“We are pleased to welcome our next class of talented family medicine residents to our communities,” said Ephraim Back, MD, Saratoga Hospital Family Medicine Residency Program director and chief of clinical initiatives at Hudson Headwaters Health Network. “Since arriving last summer, our inaugural residents have cared for a wide range of patients while working closely with our exceptional faculty. Together, we’ve built an enriching 21st-century family medicine training program that has fully filled with residents in its first two years. This is a testament to the quality of the program and faculty and the unique and rewarding opportunities to practice medicine in our region.”

By Christine Graf

With cyberattacks against small businesses on the rise in recent years, it is more important than ever for companies to have cyber liability insurance policies. 

According to Verizon’s 2021 Data Breach Investigations Report, 46 percent of all cyber breaches impact businesses with fewer than 1,000 employees. In 2020, there were over 700,000 attacks against small businesses, resulting in $2.8 billion in damages.

“We’ve been dealing with cyber liability insurance for about 10 years, but it hasn’t been until the last five years that it has become more mainstream. Every business should have a general liability policy as well as a cyber liability policy,” said Jeremy Deason, a Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter (CPCU) and account executive at Associates of Glens Falls Insurance, an independently-owned insurance agency that writes policies throughout the United States. 

When cyber liability was in its infancy, policies were purchased primarily by companies that accepted credit cards or other digital forms of payment. These policies cover credit card breaches as well as the costs associated with providing data monitoring to customers.