Setting Sights High for Local Health Care

Q&A With Dr. Maiorano

Chief Medical Officer Sean Maiorano, D.O., stands with his predecessor, Marcia Nelson, M.D.

Sean Maiorano, D.O., has provided care at Enloe Health for nearly 18 years.

In September, he became Chief Medical Officer (CMO) as his predecessor, Marcia Nelson, M.D., prepared to retire. Get to know Dr. Maiorano and what it means to be CMO.

Q: First, we hear you have a mnemonic for pronouncing your last name.

A: Yes. It is pronounced my-O-RON-oh. The little trick I like to give people is, “he’s not your rano, he’s my rano.” That usually helps them get the cadence right.

Q: Tell us about your connection to Chico.

A: I did my undergraduate at California State University, Chico, in the 1990s. I studied biology and chemistry before going off to medical school at Michigan State University. My wife, Jenny, went to Michigan with me, where she got her master’s in adolescent literature. We fell in love with Chico and knew we wanted to come back. I’ve been here 24 years or so if you count both stints.

Q: Tell us about your family and non-work interests.

A: Family is important to me. My wife and I have two daughters, one in college and one in high school. We are outdoorsy. We go camping in the summer and cook and bake together. We decided a while ago that experiences are more important than buying things, so we try to travel when we can.

I have a few odd hobbies. I like to collect different varieties of fig trees. It’s something I got into about seven years ago. I also restore and collect antique cast-iron cookware. My kids bought me a piece years back, and I learned how to restore them, collecting them for myself and giving them to friends as gifts.

Q: What is the role of Chief Medical Officer?

A: The CMO is the administrative representative of the medical staff and acts as a liaison between administration and the medical staff. The medical staff are physicians with privileges to work in a health system. We strategize to ensure physician quality and safety, and I work on projects that benefit the physicians’ experience and patient outcomes.

Q: What other leadership roles have you held?

A: I served as Enloe Health’s Secretary-Treasurer of the medical staff, Chief-of-Staff Elect and Chief of Staff. I was Vice President and President of the Chico Hospitalist Group, the physician group of hospitalists at Enloe Health. Early on, I was the Medical Director of Enloe Health’s Case Management department, and prior to taking the CMO role, I was the Medical Director for Graduate Medical Education.

Q: Speaking of that, tell us about the project to expand primary care locally.

A: Healthy Rural California, the brainchild of the Butte-Glenn Medical Society, has taken the lead on a residency program for family medicine. A residency is the post-graduate training physicians receive after medical school. They can have a residency in whatever specialty they’re entertaining. Our program will invite family medicine residents; the ultimate goal is to create more access to primary care.

The program could bring four residents per year. Enloe Health Medical Center will be the primary clinical site where residents will do hospital rotations, and they will staff a continuity clinic, expanding access to primary care for our community. The residents will also see patients at the Veterans Affairs and Northern Valley Indian Health clinics.

Statistically, about half the residents who train at a health system stay in the community. So, if a couple of residents stayed local as primary care physicians, that would be a tremendous boon for Chico and our surrounding area.