Fil-Am doc is face of Phoenix hospital

MANILA, Philippines - Everywhere you go in Phoenix, Arizona, you will see noted Filipino-American doctor Maria Divina Soriano, whose photo is prominently displayed in bus exteriors, bus stops, billboards and newspaper ads.

The Manila-born internist is the face of one of the John C. Lincoln-Deer Valley Hospital in Arizona, which honored Soriano as Physician of the Year in 2007.

“I’m very happy to be of service to the people of Arizona,” she added, “and to be recognized for doing what I love to do is a big bonus.”

Soriano, 44, is a 1990 medical graduate of the University of Santo Tomas. Certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine and a member of the American College of Physicians, she is a board member of John C. Lincoln Network and vice chief of the medical staff of the hospital.

Soriano migrated to the U.S. in 1993 and took her residency at UPMC Shadyside Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she finished with highest honors and was named Resident of the Year.

In 1999, she was hired by the University of Pittsburgh Health System to be one of its primary care physicians. In 2002, she and her husband left Pennsylvania for Phoenix to become hospitalists, whose practice is solely in the hospital. They later formed the Independent Hospitalists group.

“I’m really honored and happy to be chosen as the face of the hospital,” Soriano said. “For them to choose me, a Filipino, to promote the hospital is a big honor.”

It has also become a source of teasing among colleagues. “Some of the nurses and pharmacists were joking that if I lose my job as a physician, I can always go into modeling full time,” Soriano quipped. “Some also asked how much I got paid for posing in those ads.”

Her husband, Dr. Frankie Peralta, a Michigan-born Fil-Am internist at the same hospital, jokes that he is also part of the hospital ad campaign, except that “his face was pasted on the wheels of the buses,” Soriano laughed.   – Edmund Silvestre