Dr. Alpesh Amin: The Physician Who Oversaw Bill Clinton’s Medical Team at UC Irvine Medical Center

Former President Bill Clinton was released from a California hospital on Oct. 17, after being admitted for an infection earlier in the week. Dr. Alpesh Amin, executive director of hospital medicine at UC Irvine Health, oversaw Clinton’s medical team. In a statement, posted on Twitter by Clinton’s spokesman Angel Ureña, Amin indicated that Clinton’s fever and white blood cell count were normal and that he will return to New York to complete his course of antibiotics.” “On behalf of everyone at UC Irvine Medical Center, we were honored to have treated him and will continue to monitor his progress,” the statement read.

The 42nd president was admitted on Oct. 12 to the UC Irvine Medical Center’s intensive care unit for a urinary tract infection that spread to his bloodstream. He was treated in the hospital’s intensive care unit, for privacy and safety, not because he needed intensive care, news reports said, citing doctors. 

A UCI veteran, Amin is an internationally recognized leader in the field of hospital medicine, according to his profile on The Hospitalist, the official news magazine of the Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM). At UCI, he served in various roles like vice chair for Clinical Affairs and Quality; chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine; associate program director of the Internal Medicine Residency Program; and medicine clerkship director. He pioneered one of the nation’s first hospitalist programs in 1998 and “is the first and only chairman of the department of medicine at an academic medical school and academic medical center worldwide.” 

Born in Baroda, India, Amin moved to the U.S. with his family before his first birthday. He told The Hospitalist that he credits his family with instilling in him strong values and dedication to his work. 

He graduated from Northgate High School in Walnut Creek, California, in 1985, and from UC San Diego with a degree in bioengineering in 1989. He obtained his MD in 1994 from Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. He completed his internship, residency in internal medicine, and chief residency at UCI. He also earned a healthcare MBA at UCI and an undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering from the University of California, San Diego.

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Amin is an author and co-author of several peer-reviewed articles and is the co-editor/co-author of the Core Competencies in Hospital Medicine, published by the Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM) and co-editor of Contemporary Hospitalists’ Guide to Anticoagulation. He is the recipient of numerous awards focused on quality of care, medical education, and outcomes research, including the American College of Physicians Special Recognition Award, and the Venous Research Award for Quality Improvement and Implementation of Best Practices from the Venous Disease Coalition (VDC)/Vascular Disease Foundation (VDF). 

He is a senior fellow of the Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM), a master of the American College of Physicians (ACP), and a member of the Society of General Internal Medicine and Academic Chiefs and Leaders of General Internal Medicine.