Dr. Bhawna Arya will be joining the Fetal Care and Treatment Center leadership team as the Medical Co-Director.
Dr. Arya has been an active member of the Prenatal Program at Seattle Children’s Hospital since 2013 and currently directs two clinical programs within the FCTC.
In 2019, she was appointed the Director of Fetal Cardiology. In this role, she oversees pediatric cardiologists who interpret fetal echocardiograms and perform fetal consultations and fetal cardiac sonographers in Seattle and across our WWAMI region, acting as a bridge between the Fetal Center and Heart Center.
In 2021, as the program continued to grow locally and regionally and expand into the field of fetal interventions, she took on the role of co-director of the Prenatal Diagnosis and Treatment Program. She currently supervises all diagnostic imaging and non-intervention clinical operations at the FCTC across subspecialties involved in fetal counseling and prenatal to perinatal management.
She also collaborates with the Fetal Intervention Team to support the diagnostic tests for the FI program. Finally, she is committed to improving equitable fetal diagnostic care throughout our region. She works strategically with NICUs, MFMs, and other practices across the WWAMI region to support timely and accurate fetal diagnoses and guide providers to appropriate management.
In her new role as Fetal Center Co-Director, alongside Dr. Steven Lee and Wendy McGrath, her responsibilities will include:
- Focus on the best interest of the fetus and child in all strategic processes and programmatic decisions in collaboration with FCTC Co-Directors and hospital leadership.
- Oversight and growth of the prenatal diagnostic programs, including a focus on multidisciplinary and telemedicine approaches to care, to broaden the reach and scope of care for patients and providers throughout the region. This includes easy access to second opinions for families.
- Create and maintain relationships within the WWAMI region and eventually broaden them to surrounding regions currently supported by other Children’s Hospitals (this will include outreach, working with the regional strategic planning team, and physician relations).
- Function as the bridge between prenatal, perinatal, and postnatal care for improved collaboration and care coordination between OB/MFM, NICU, SCH ICUs, and neonatal interventional/surgical subspecialties. Some of this work will overlap with the domain of fetal intervention.
- Partner with neonatology leaders within SCH/UW to optimize specialized care in the neonatal period as patient complexity increases. Expand relationships with NICUs in the region.
- Oversight of research endeavors across the center
Dr. Edith Cheng will continue leadership over Maternal-Fetal Medicine, and Dr. Lee over fetal intervention. Jordanna Tomblin will contine, in her role as Senior Director over the Surgical Service Line, to serve as senior administrative leadership.
Dr. Cheng will specifically continue to have administrative and operational oversight of the maternal-fetal medicine/prenatal diagnosis aspect of the SCH fetal program, assuring multidisciplinary collaboration, assessment, efficiencies, and safety in the care of the pregnant patient. This structure should continue to support the highest quality of outcomes, access, and compassionate care as we build a world-class center.