Daniel L. Handel MD

Dr. Dan Handel joined Denver Health as the founding Chief of Palliative Medicine in August 2013, and initiated an inpatient consultation service which is experiencing rapid growth in all hospital areas. He is board certified in Family Practice and Hospice and Palliative Medicine, and elected for early retirement from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland in order to accept the opportunity to initiate the Division of Palliative Medicine at Denver Health. He directed NIH’s palliative medicine training fellowship since its inception as one of the first eleven programs in the country. Prior recruitment to his NIH career, Dr. Handel served as the medical director for a large Texas non-profit hospice, helped to found and direct a free-standing inpatient hospice hospital in Fort Worth, and later initiate palliative medicine services at a five-hundred bed academic community hospital.