Dr. Ruch is a board-certified emergency physician who works at Northeast Georgia Medical Center (NGMC). She attended the Medical College of Georgia for medical school and graduated from Wake Forest Emergency Medicine residency in 2018. She was born and raised in Mexico and moved to the USA, where her mother is from, in high school. Naturally, she is a native Spanish speaker and fully bilingual.
In addition to practicing as a full-time clinician and nocturnist in one of the largest emergency departments in the state of Georgia, faculty for graduate medical education, and a researcher on behavioral health emergencies, Dr. Ruch has multiple other interests and non-clinical roles at NGMC.
She championed the development and accreditation of Gold level Pain and Addiction Care in the Emergency Department (PACED), the first in the state of Georgia. Since 2019, Dr. Ruch developed PACED as a robust, cross-collaborative pathway to identify, engage and initiate evidence-based therapy, and hand off care for patients struggling with opiate use disorder who desire recovery. First, a multidisciplinary team evaluates and treats patients in the ED. This team is made up of peer recovery coaches, behavioral health specialists, case managers and emergency providers. When they see the patient in the ED, if desired and a candidate, providers start medications such as buprenorphine and/or naloxone. The patient is able to continue their journey at home with intensive outpatient follow up (which providers help arrange). If necessary, patients are hospitalized. Harm reduction information and community outreach are also provided.
Dr. Ruch is also passionate about the delivery of “waiting room medicine,” which has caused unsafe patient care conditions, undesirable patient experiences, and severe workforce attrition in the post-covid era. She leads a task force at NGMC where multiple stakeholders are focusing on improving operational processes in the waiting room to improve patient care, provider efficiency, staff morale and patient experience.
Dr. Ruch previously served as the ED Stroke Liaison and assisted in the acquisition of the Comprehensive Stroke Center certification, the highest DNV stroke designation, that was awarded to NGMC in September 2021.
Dr. Ruch has received multiple awards, most recently the 2023 Faculty Research Mentor of the Yearat NGMC; achieved Fellow status at the American College of Emergency Physicians in 2022 and was named the 2021 Doctor of the Year for NGMC Barrow.
In her free time, Dr. Ruch enjoys spending time with her husband and two children, cooking, hiking, mountain biking, running, reading, and traveling to conferences.
“I listen/read to EMRAP, EBMedicine and Emedhome. I love learning and being challenged and I’m so excited to have EM residents!”
Dr. Alison Ruch
Her book recommendations while training Emergency Medicine residents include: The White Coat Investor by Dahle, The Great Influenza by Barry, When Breath Becomes Air by Kalanithi, Coach Wooden’s Pyramid of Success by Wooden.
