Spirit of Excellence Award

Srikar Vulugundam – Erlanger Community Health Centers Dentist

“Dr. Vulugundam is a passionate provider who not only does all it takes to care for the underserved patients every day, but also personally takes up tasks to help the team get to where they need to be. He embodies the Erlanger values of excellence, leadership, nurturing, and generosity by dedicating his time and energy to projects and tasks beyond clinical care. Listed below are just a few of the many instances where Dr. Vulugundam has done exemplary things to help the team and go the extra mile for staff and patients:

• We had been struggling with the metric for UDS tracking. Within the last three weeks, Dr. Vulugundam personally started putting in same-day visits for all the pediatric exams in that specific age group in order to get these procedures done.
• Our clinic hosts UT Dental School student rotations and oftentimes the local clinic equipment is changed which causes confusion and chaos in set ups. Last week, Dr. Vulugundam borrowed a label maker and personally sat down and made labels for the dental chairs and tool attachments so the rotating students can follow a standard protocol.
• Dr. Vulugundam coordinates any emergency equipment repairs with vendors and technicians whenever an emergency happens. We had a broken suction line and chair leak in one of the patient rooms and Dr. Vulugundam facilitated that repair with the vendor.”