Stratus Announces New Chief Medical Officer
Jeremy Slater, M.D., ABCN has joined Stratus’ executive team as our first Chief Medical Officer (CMO). Dr. Slater brings to our team 25 years of experience as a neurologist providing clinical care to epilepsy patients, plus his new broad vision for expanding services offered through Stratus.
Our Chief Executive Officer, Conor Butts, stated, “We are extremely excited to have Dr. Slater on board. He not only shares our values and dedication to providing world-class patient care, but has tremendous experience and knowledge in the field of neurology caring for those suffering from epilepsy.” His addition to our executive team will allow us to develop new services that could potentially benefit patients across the country and beyond,” Butts added.
About Dr. Slater’s Background & Experience
Dr. Slater completed his neurology residency and a fellowship in epilepsy and clinical neurophysiology at the University of Miami. He then served there as an Assistant Professor of Neurology, before moving to Bismarck, North Dakota, where he worked for three years as a general neurologist. He then worked in private practice for a multi-specialty hospital system in Springfield, Missouri, where he focused on epileptic and sleep medicine for close to a decade.
Dr. Slater was then recruited to return to academic medicine at the University of Houston by Dr. James Ferrendelli, a legendary figure in the epilepsy community who was then the Neurology Chair. There Dr. Slater became the Director of the Texas Comprehensive Epilepsy Program. During his 13-year tenure there, he was instrumental in growing the program to one of the largest epilepsy surgery programs in the country. In 2004, the program consisted of 1 adult epilepsy doctor and 1 epilepsy surgeon. Dr. Slater’s program did roughly 20 epilepsy surgeries that year but by 2015, were up to 5 adult epilepsy doctors, 3 pediatric epilepsy doctors and completed more than 130 epilepsy surgery cases along with 30 vagal nerve stimulator implantations. To put that in perspective, the total number of epilepsy surgeries remained roughly constant in the US at about 4000/year. So in 2004, Dr. Slater’s program accounted for 0.5% of all the surgeries done at roughly 130 centers across the country. In contrast, by 2015 as a single-center, the program accounted for more than 3% of all the surgeries done (more than 4 times the national average, and the third-largest volume in the country).
Dr. Slater Excited About Potential to Positively Impact More Patients
Dr. Slater states that his position with Stratus “has given me the chance, after spending more than 25 years in the clinical care of patients suffering from epilepsy, to expand the impact of my work to patients across the country.” Over time, Dr. Slater said he’s witnessed “the increased use of home-based platforms to deliver care to patients. I also had the chance to see the beginning of this transformation in the field of video-electroencephalographic (VEEG) monitoring.”
The doctor said he’s been aware of Stratus’s reputation as a VEEG leader for a long time. “Of the companies providing this service, Stratus stood out in terms of its dedication to providing the best patient experience, the highest technical quality of the studies, and when I met and interacted with the leadership, it was clear they are focused on thinking ahead—seeing the ways the new scientific developments can be rapidly applied to improve patient care” he explained.
Learn more about our Medical Advisory Board and Leadership Team by visiting our About Us page.
