Our residency continuity clinic is the Internal Medicine Clinic (IMC). Our practice provides care for a wide variety of medically complex adult patients and is conveniently located within the Greenville Memorial Hospital complex. Patients whom the residents have treated in the hospital will often follow up in this practice. Our clinic has been in existence over 20 years and cares for multi-generational families. This practice is well-supported by a dedicated nursing staff, medical assistants, social workers, a dietician, financial counselor, lab technician, pharmacists, and attending physician clinician educators. Subspecialty clinics are also held on a rotating basis, allowing residents to see their continuity patients with care needs alongside the subspecialty attending physicians. Our residents also have ample opportunity for ambulatory medicine experiences in a variety of other settings during their elective months. Our program provides educational experiences in all the major medical subspecialties and general internal medicine in satellite offices, medical center clinics and private practice settings.

All residents do two blocks of ambulatory clinic each year of residency. During this time, residents will split their time amongst continuity clinic, episodic clinic (i.e. acute care visits), and an assortment of specialty clinics. Each resident will have a panel of patients they serve as the primary care provider for throughout their three years of training.

Residents will also have continuity clinic days while on electives and non-inpatient services. Very rarely do residents have outpatient continuity while on their inpatient services (MTS, CCTS, CTS, etc.) which allows residents to focus on their inpatient patients and duties. 

Specialty clinics take place in the exact same building as the continuity clinics. Attendings in those designated specialties (i.e. cardiology, dermatology, rheumatology, etc.) all come to those clinics where the residents are able to work with the specialists and see specialist level of care, consults, ongoing management, and follow-ups on a weekly basis. We also have an addiction recovery clinic in our clinic through which residents have the opportunity of rotating through. We offer a multi-disciplinary diabetes clinic with pharmacists through which residents will also work and learn what other disciplines have to offer in counseling and medical care.

Ambulatory education has a dedicated Friday didactic session for the whole residency once every block that coordinates with the specialty topic of that block but with a more outpatient focus. We incorporate both attending driven discussions, literature and guidelines updates, as well as resident given talks. Separate discussion sessions for those residents on their ambulatory block also occur 1-2 times each month to cover various topics.

Meenu Jindal, MD

Medical Director, Internal Medicine Clinic

Associate Professor of Medicine, University of South
Carolina School of Medicine-Greenville

I am extremely fortunate to be a part of Internal Medicine Residency program in Greenville for last 15 years. My passion lies in working with our residents in various settings, especially in the Internal Medicine Clinic (IMC). In my role as the medical director of IMC, I strive to create a highly educational primary care experience for our residents in collaboration with our excellent GIM attendings, staff and administrative team. IMC is established as a Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH) and provides various resources for our patients. Our highly skilled team at IMC coordinates the care of our patients and assists our resident physicians in addressing the socioeconomic barriers their patients face. With my specific interest in behavior change and care coordination for chronic disease management especially for underserved populations, I seek to create opportunities for various quality improvement and research projects for our residents. Notable amongst past and current projects are motivational Interviewing training for health care providers, SBIRT (Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment) for substance use disorder, patient centered motivational interviewing based diabetes support group, exercise is medicine program implementation, mindfulness for physical inactivity, depression and opioid use disorder, programs to address food insecurity and shared decision making for colorectal cancer screening. SAMHSA SBIRT grant, American Cancer Society colorectal cancer screening grant and Greenville Health Authority Mindful Greenville Project grant are some of the major funding we have received for respective projects. Recently IMC has received an advanced PCMH initiatives grant as well, which will further empower us to provide access to resources for our patients. These projects have also laid the groundwork for scholarly activity for our residents including abstracts, posters and oral presentations at local, regional and national meetings as well as manuscripts.

The Internal Medicine Clinic is truly a unique medical home with a multitude of resources to not only support the residents in caring for their patients, but also in providing many resources and opportunities to our patient population in order to help them overcome barriers to care. Below are brief bios and explanations of the types of resources and support roles found in our clinic.

Our residents are divided into four (4) resident clinic teams during their training. Each team has a designated RN and scheduler assigned to the residents. During residency, you will be the PCP to an assigned panel of patients. Additionally, you will also see patients of other residents on your clinic team when they are not in clinic, much as private practice partners cover for each other. This divides up the patient pool and provides for more continuity. Each clinic team RN knows their patients very well and assists in supporting the residents and providing more continuity.

We have many other support staff including, but not limited to, pharmacy technicians, laboratory technicians, medical assistants, dietician, social worker, financial assistance, medication assistance, and counseling.

A newer part of our clinic is the Recovery clinic which is run by Dr. Alain Litwin (Vice Chair of Academics) along with his support staff (see bios below). Residents will have opportunities to rotate through and even do extra elective time for those with more interest in the Recovery clinic.