SFVA General Cardiology Clinic

The Cardiology clinic at the SFVAMC provides services for the San Francisco Health Care System which extends from the San Francisco Peninsula to the California/Oregon border.

With recent staff additions, the Cardiology clinic can offer more than 100 visits per week (5000-6000 per year) at the SFVAMC. Cardiology clinics are also being established at the Oakland and Santa Rosa community-based outpatient clinics (CBOCs) under the direction of the SFVAMC staff. To best serve our veterans from a broad geographic region, as well as other VA medical centers (Northern California/Mather, Reno, Fresno, and Las Vegas), the full array of in-person visits, telehealth (video and telephone), as well as electronic consults (E-consults) are available to facilitate and coordinate care. Consults are triaged and prioritized generally within one business day and assigned the appropriate mode of care and urgency. The clinic is staffed by cardiologists with expertise in coronary artery disease, coronary interventions, structural heart disease, heart valve disorders, congestive heart failure, arrhythmias, and resistant hypertension. Cardiology fellows from UCSF as well as NPs also play a key role in the care of the clinic patients, and all cases are staffed with an attending cardiologist. In addition to general cardiology clinic, there are also sub-specialty services such as congestive heart failure, arrhythmia, structural heart disease and women’s cardiovascular disease clinics.

Nurse Practitioners

This clinic has several excellent NPs: Linda Ho, Robert Malloy, Sarah Goodman, Samantha Norris, and Julia Nakad.

Linda Ho has been an NP at the SFVAMC for over 30 years and has worked with the cardiology clinic part-time for last decade and a half. She has extensive clinical experience in hypertension after working with Dr. Barry Massie for many years. Linda is closely involved in the triage of and management of urgent cardiology outpatient referrals.

Robert Malloy has been an NP in Cardiology since 2017 after joining from the Oakland VA. Robert has an interest in quality of care and improvement, as well as heart failure. His work on remote telehealth for heart failure was highlighted recently in the VA.

Sarah Goodman joined Cardiology in 2020 after completing her NP residency here at SFVAMC. She has a joint appointment in Medical Practice and a particular interest in women’s cardiovascular health. 

Samantha Norris and Julia Nakad are recent graduates of the SFVAMC NP residency as well, and will be joining the Cardiology NP team. Together, the NP team will continue to work on providing urgent in-person and Telehealth visits, as well as expanding to provide additional coverage in the Cardiac Stress Lab and the Oakland VA clinic and to improve post-discharge urgent follow-up in Cardiology.

PACT Cardiology Team

The cardiology clinic is fortunate to have three dedicated, hard-working nurses as part of our PACT team—Frances Wu RN, Xiangying Jensen RN, and Erwin Supremo LVN. 

They are busy managing patient-flow during the clinic and in off-clinic hours serve as a bridge between the patients and their cardiology providers. These nurses are often the patient’s initial contact with Cardiology when they call to arrange the clinic appointment. The nursing staff play a key role in coordinating the appropriate visit type and ensuring that our patients from the entire region can be cared for in the best fashion.