BHC Provider

Brayden P Yellman, MD is a board-certified physician in internal medicine and rheumatology at BHC. He completed a BS in biology at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, and a Doctor of Medicine at University of Texas in Houston. He completed a residency at Exempla Saint Joseph in Denver, CO, and a fellowship in rheumatology at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Dr. Yellman joined BHC in January 2019.

Prior to BHC, Dr. Yellman practiced at Intermountain Healthcare diagnosing and managing complex health issues and illnesses in an outpatient clinic and consulting with network providers. He developed and implemented a patient referral triage system to expeditiously identify particularly ill patients and provide them with rapid access with a focus on the underserved population suffering prolonged waiting periods. Dr. Yellman helped create curriculum to educate primary care providers in recognizing, diagnosing, and managing rheumatological diseases.

Since coming to BHC in early 2019, Dr. Yellman has meticulously evaluated complicated new patients, many of whom are in the early stages of ME/CFS or FM, and each requiring 4-6 hours of intense initial evaluation with subsequent follow-up. He has also adopted or consulted with many long-standing BHC patients. Dr. Yellman is an active collaborator on educational projects and develops and presents curriculum to educate medical providers in recognizing, diagnosing, and managing ME/CFS, FM, and comorbid conditions. He provided the intellectual content for a series of six short videos designed to rapidly teach how to recognize ME/CFS as well as how to diagnose and manage both orthostatic intolerance syndromes and post-exertional malaise.

Dr. Yellman is conversant in Spanish and has been a tireless educator, volunteer, and leader in causes for his community and profession. Dr. Yellman has also been recognized for his volunteer work with marrow donor programs. He also has received high ratings by patients for his bedside manner, communication, compassion, and humanism.

Education and Training

Personal Statement

I began my professional career as a clinical rheumatologist with a particular interest and focus upon managing complex multi-system illnesses such as systemic sclerosis, inflammatory myositis, IgG-4 related illness, and the vasculitities.  As a clinician, these conditions provided unique management challenges and required the ability to analyze, synthesize, and prioritize a wide breadth of clinical information in order to optimally provide the highest standard of care.  I often dealt with clinical situations for which no evidence-based “correct answer” could be ascertained and my comfort for managing chronic conditions, without a clear treatment goal or “cure” grew.  As a scientist, these illnesses were equally captivating, as they existed within a rapidly evolving scientific understanding and emerging field of literature. 

In 2019, I chose to shift the focus of my work to specifically specialize in the management and care of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), another complex, chronic, and multisystem illness with a rapidly emerging evidence-based fund of knowledge and a patient population who remained severely underserved in both access to exceptional clinical care as well as continued evolving research.  I joined the staff at the Bateman Horne Center of Excellence, a non-profit dedicated to education, clinical care, and research upon both ME/CFS and Fibromyalgia.  Over the last year, I have worked closely, both as a clinician and a scientist, with Dr. Lucinda Bateman, a leading specialist in the field.  In total, our center has amassed a collection of over 220 well-defined patients with ME/CFS and collected blood samples from all of these patients for analysis by molecular methods such as immune cell phenotyping, antibody, and cytokine evaluation, and metabolomic profiling.  Through our unique access to both biological and longitudinal clinical data among a rather large cohort of well-defined patients with ME/CFS, I hope to contribute to the understanding of distinct clinical subtypes of the illness as well as  elucidation of molecular and biological underpinning of the illness so as to work towards a more complete understanding of the pathophysiology of the illness and to improved treatments, or perhaps even a cure, for those afflicted with ME/CFS.  

The Bateman Horne Center of Excellence has a long tradition of contributions to research and has participated in over 30 clinical trials, including collaborations with basic and clinical researchers from the University of Utah, Columbia University, Nova Southeastern University, Harvard University, Stanford University, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  These collaborative projects have resulted in a number of peer reviewed publications.  As part of my dedication to advancing care for patients with ME/CFS, I wish to utilize the extensive resources of my organization and its patient population to make significant research contributions to this end, and I look forward to assisting the Bateman Horne Center in contributing to their tradition of excellence and commitments to advancing the scientific underpinnings of both ME/CFS and FM.   

Positions and Honors

Contributions to Science

During my medical training in both my internal medicine residency and my rheumatology fellowship, I began to participate in the scientific process and make contributions to the fund of knowledge within the discipline of rheumatology, though none of this work ultimately led to any major publications.  My work is summarized below.

University of Texas Medical School at Houston, Division of Rheumatology
Supervised by Maureen D. Mayes, MD, MPH                                                    Dec 2012-Jan 2013

• Abstracted over 80 medical records for electronic database capture of clinical features of subjects in the Scleroderma Registry and Genome-Wide Association Study in Scleroderma

• Processed skin and blood samples for the GENISOS (Genes verses Environment in Scleroderma Outcome Study) longitudinal cohort study

University of Pennsylvania, Division of Rheumatology
Supervised by Dr. Joshua F. Baker, MD, MSCE                                                Aug 2015-May2016

• Evaluated for a relationship between increasing C-reactive protein (CRP) levels and increasing visceral adiposity as measured by full body DEXA, in a cohort of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients through use of logistical regression analysis
• Assessed for a relationship between increasing years of prednisone use and increasing visceral adiposity in a cohort of RA patients through use of logistical regression analysis
• Explored for a relationship between increasing CRP levels and increasing years of prednisone use in a cohort of rheumatoid arthritis patients through use of logistical regression analysis

Supervised by Dr. Nora Sandorfi, MD                                                                Jan 2016-May 2016

• Developed a cross-sectional study to evaluate patient awareness of ophthalmological complications associated with hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) use, compliance with recommended screening, barriers to obtaining appropriate screening, and dissemination of screening results to treating rheumatologists among patients taking HCQ in the University of Pennsylvania rheumatology clinic
• Designed a quality improvement initiative to enhance patient compliance with recommended ophthalmological screening through creation of an educational and instructive notice disseminated through the electronic medical record to each rheumatology patient taking HCQ
• Drafted a formal letter addressed to eye care professions requesting nationally recommended ophthalmological screening in the setting of HCQ use and soliciting direct communication of screening results back to treating rheumatologists

Presentations

Throughout my residency training at Exempla Saint Joseph Hospital and my fellowship training at the University of Pennsylvania, I frequently presented unique and challenging clinical cases followed by a review of relevant clinical literal to a large audience of my physician colleagues as an educational tool to help everyone in attendance improve their clinical acumen and skill.

For more details on Yellman’s presentations click here.