Westside Regional MC anesthesiology chief joins UMMC faculty

Medical Center leadership is proud to announce the following addition to its faculty and leadership staff.

George Ashley Semien, MD

Dr. George Ashley Semien has joined the Medical Center faculty as an associate professor of anesthesiology and director of the Cardiac Anesthesia Division in the Department of Anesthesiology.

After receiving his BS in neuroscience cum laude from the University of Rochester, New York, in 1998, Semien earned his MD at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, concurrently with his MPH in epidemiology from the University of North Texas, Fort Worth, in 2002. He completed an internal medicine internship at Park Ridge Hospital, University of Rochester, in 2003 and residency training in anesthesiology with an emphasis in cardiac anesthesia at the University of Rochester Strong Memorial Hospital in 2006. He also obtained an MSc in health economics, policy and management with merit honors, magna cum laude, from the London School of Economics in 2015.

Semien served as an anesthesiologist and cardiac anesthesiologist from 2006-10 at Panhandle Anesthesia Associate Sacred Heart Hospital, Pensacola, Florida, where he was interdepartmental chief of neuroanesthesia from 2007-09. He then served as vice chief of anesthesia and director of obstetric anesthesia at Mercy Hospital of Miami, Florida, Sheridan Health Corporation, from 2010-12. He then served as a staff anesthesiologist in the Cleveland Clinic Florida Department of Anesthesiology from 2012-18.

He was nominated by the Cleveland Clinic to the foundation’s Leading in Health Care Course: a year-long program dedicated to cultivating leadership skills in a small group of caregivers within the organization, becoming the anesthesia department’s director of quality and outcomes in 2015, director of research in 2016 and director of quality for the hospital specialties (emergency medicine, anesthesia, radiology and pathology) in 2017. During this time, Cleveland Clinic Florida was ranked the No. 1 hospital in the Miami Dade-Broward County region by U.S. News and World Report. In 2018, he became chief of anesthesiology at Westside Regional Medical Center in Broward County, Florida, and began serving as director of solid organ transplant anesthesia and associate program director of the anesthesia residency program at Memorial Healthcare System in 2019. In 2020, he became director of high risk and cardiac obstetric anesthesia.

A fellow of the American Society of Echocardiography, an advanced perioperative TEE diplomate of the National Board of Echocardiography and a board-certified diplomate of the American Board of Anesthesiology, Semien is an active member of numerous professional organizations, including the Society of Cardiovascular Anesthesiologists, for whom he has served on the national Subcommittee for Economic Affairs and Governance and currently serves on the Committees for Blood Utilization and Regional Anesthesia in Cardiac Surgery; the American Society of Anesthesiologists; the Society for Education in Anesthesia; and the International Society of Pharmacoeconomics.

Semien is editor in chief of the StatPearls section: specialty “Anesthesiology-Medical Student” and journal reviewer for the Journal of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Anesthesia. He is the author or coauthor of several articles in peer-reviewed professional publications and has given presentations at scientific conferences and has lectured nationally.