healthcare reform

What does the witchhunt against Harvard President Claudine Gay have to do with the Obama Beer Summit?  Quite a lot.  More at proleftpod.com 

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For the two million Americans diagnosed with cancer each year, the emotional toll of absorbing the news is often exacerbated by uncertainty about the variety of treatments, and confusion trying to navigate a fragmented healthcare system. Accompanying patients on that journey and smoothing the way for them is where Thyme Care enters the picture, a company that supports and supplements the care provided by oncology practices at no cost to patients. “We do the types of things that everybody in the oncology space knows should be done, but it’s often hard to operationalize them at scale,” says Dr. Brad Diephuis, the company’s chief business officer and a cancer survivor himself. Those things include tracking patient reported outcomes and providing proactive symptom monitoring throughout cancer treatment in order to catch problems early and prevent unnecessary interventions and hospitalizations. Data presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology conference in 2022 indicates Thyme Care is delivering on its value proposition for insurance plans and other payers: reducing costs and increasing patient satisfaction. Join host Michael Carrese in learning why Diephuis thinks its shared savings model is succeeding, how its “care pod” model works, and what the company’s plans are for growth.

Mentioned in this episode: https://www.thymecare.com/

“I did not see myself as a leader, to be honest. I had my mind made up on doing something else, but it has been an amazing journey,” says Dr. Tiffany Morris, director of Nursing at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University.  That journey includes being the inaugural department chair in the nursing program at Elon University School of Health Sciences and serving as an interim dean in North Carolina A&T’s School of Nursing. She returned to North Carolina A&T earlier this year partly because of the larger impact she can have due to the school being the largest Historically Black College and University in the nation. “The opportunity to serve students who are normally underrepresented and be able to produce healthcare providers that look like the people that they're serving is an amazing opportunity,” she tells host Michael Carrese. Highlights of the curriculum include an accelerated nursing program which allows those with bachelor’s degrees to earn an RN in twelve months, advanced simulation training -- including access to new 3D technology that allows for virtual dissection -- and an emphasis on providing culturally appropriate care, which Morris stresses goes well beyond race to include culturally-based food preferences and spiritual practices and beliefs.  Morris has a research interest in the latter where she focuses on why African-Americans have a lower rate of hospice enrollment. Find out about one key factor in turning that around, why the university is pursuing R1 research status and new degree offerings coming soon.

Mentioned in this episode: North Carolina A&T School of Nursing

Sacramento, California has long been one of America’s most racially diverse cities, so it stands to reason that reducing disparities in healthcare delivery is a focus of Dr. David Lubarsky, the CEO for UC Davis Health in Sacramento. “We've realized that health equity can really only be achieved if you actually have the time and resources to get what's needed to make yourself well or keep yourself well,” he tells host Michael Carrese.  With that tight correlation between economics and equity in mind, UC Davis Health leaned into its role as an employer and launched an effort to hire more people from the communities it serves. “We've managed in two years' time to go from having 6% to 20% of our unlicensed workforce from the ten most underserved zip codes in the city.” Lubarsky is also focused on the diversity of learners in the UC Davis School of Medicine, which he also oversees, because it’s been well established that patients from historically marginalized groups have better outcomes when their providers look like them. Tune in to learn about the strategies he’s pursuing to that end, where he sees AI fitting into healthcare delivery and what’s included in the system’s historic $7 billion capital building campaign.

Mentioned in this episode: UC Davis Health

Having a waiting list of 20,000 people to take your training is a pretty good sign you’re onto something important. That’s the mixed blessing Dr. Richard Schwartz faces as interest in Internal Family Systems -- an innovative therapeutic approach to trauma and other mental disorders he developed -- continues to grow. The “family” in this case are the multiple parts of a person’s psyche that, in Schwartz’s view, need to listen to each other in order for people to overcome traumas and function well. “This is an alternative paradigm for understanding all kinds of what are seen as mental illnesses. Part of my goal is to bring this different perspective to all of these things that have been so medicalized,” he explains to host Shiv Gaglani.  A welcome discovery of IFS is that among the parts, there is a core Self that can't be damaged and knows how to heal. As Schwartz explains it, IFS therapy works by opening enough space for the Self to pop out and start relating to, and leading, the other parts that may be critical, protective or play other roles. Don’t miss this fascinating look at an evidence-based therapeutic approach that challenges conventional thinking and offers hope to patients with a long history of struggle. "There are many heavily diagnosed people who feel hugely relieved to know they're not sick."

Mentioned in this episode: https://ifs-institute.com/

Lessons From A Healthcare Entrepreneur’s Journey - Ari Blum, CEO and Founder of Clover Learning

Today’s guest, Ari Blum, enjoyed working as a hospital-based radiologic technologist and became a successful edtech entrepreneur, but he’s not one to sugarcoat either experience. That’s why this in-depth conversation with host Shiv Gaglani is a great learning opportunity for those interested in a healthcare career, or entrepreneurship, or both as Ari describes his remarkable journey creating and running Clover Learning, which helps medical imaging students prepare for certification exams and empowers working professionals to efficiently earn their continuing education credits. A longstanding entrepreneurial mindset spurred Ari to convert what was a side hustle creating short continuing education videos into an ed-tech platform that has been used by more than 50,000 learners. And while he loves what he does and the impact he has, he cautions that entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart. “If you take the time -- and in many cases, people's money -- and you're convincing people to leave a job and come work for you and spend their money on your product or service, there's a stewardship with that and there's a weight and there's a sacrifice.” But for those motivated to manage those challenges, Ari says this is a better time than ever to get projects off the ground. Tune in to find out why he thinks that’s the case, where he thinks AI is going in healthcare and what plans he has for expanding the reach of Clover Learning into other medical fields and beyond. 

Mentioned in this episode:

Clover Learning

"This" - Song by Darius Rucker

Group dental practices are common now, but that was not the case thirty years ago when solo practitioners dominated the space. On this special episode of Raise the Line produced in collaboration with Areo Dental, we’re going to hear from two leading figures in changing that paradigm, Dr. Rick Workman, the founder and executive chairman of Heartland Dental and Pat Bauer, the company’s CEO. As you’ll learn in this fascinating conversation led by Areo Dental’s co-CEOs -- Dr. Anushka Gaglani and Dr. Abhishek Nagaraj -- Workman and Bauer grew Heartland from a handful of practices into the largest dental support organization in the US with more than 1,700 locations. Workman attributes that success to thinking of their members as customers, and making sure to create value for them and respect for dentistry. “We have to understand they have to have clinical autonomy and our job is to do everything we can to make their lives better and easier and to always honor the patient.” Heartland does that by providing everything from operational support to benchmarking for quality assurance to vetting technology, among many other services. From a business perspective, Bauer thinks an additional factor in Heartland’s growth has been being in synch with the needs and goals of the practices. “It's about alignment with our doctors, alignment with the owners, alignment with all the teams, and that led us to be able to continue to grow because more and more people become successful.” Don’t miss this unique opportunity to learn about the evolution of dental practices in the US, what it means for patients, and what lies ahead for the field. 

Mentioned in this episode:

https://www.areodental.com/

https://heartland.com/

It's safe to say the majority of people reading this post have used Uber as a ride service, and many have also tapped Uber Eats for food delivery. What you might be less familiar with is the Uber Health platform that enables healthcare organizations to arrange rides and services on behalf of patients including deliveries of prescriptions, groceries, and over-the-counter items to their homes. Patients don’t need to have an Uber account, credit card or even a smartphone because everything is handled for them by a care coordinator. According to our guest Dr. Mike Cantor, the company’s chief medical officer, the aim is to make the healthcare system more efficient and effective by improving access to the services people need to stay healthy. “In the value-based care system where you can save money by being preventive and keeping people away from hospitals, Uber is potentially a really good set of solutions for the healthcare system and ultimately for the patients as well,” he says. Cantor is well-placed to help guide Uber’s potential impact on healthcare because of his rich background as a clinician and executive working on quality improvement and care management programs for healthcare providers and health plans. Don’t miss this fascinating discussion with host Derek Apanovitch about how healthcare delivery is being impacted by one of today’s most disruptive and innovative companies, and learn what partnerships Uber is forming to grow its healthcare role including support for caregivers.  

Mentioned in this episode: https://www.uberhealth.com/

Today's guest fits into one of Raise the Line’s favorite categories of people: physician entrepreneur. We've talked before on the podcast about the overlapping qualities of drive, curiosity, and desire for impact that both share, and that last trait is the core interest of Dr. Navin Goyal. A great example is OFFOR Health, a mobile healthcare company he co-founded that expedites care for children in the US who face long waits for procedures. “If you’re a four-year-old with dental disease and you're on Medicaid, you have an average nine-to-twelve month wait to get into an operating room.  We can enable that procedure within one month,” says Goyal. His experience with OFFOR led to the formation of LOUD Capital, which allows Goyal and his partners to seek out other business opportunities that have a social impact. Since launching in 2015, LOUD has partnered with over seventy portfolio companies in healthcare and beyond. But despite his success, Goyal has embraced the concept of being an underdog, hence the title of the book about his journey, Physician Underdog, and his weekly newsletter Underdog for Good. Check out this episode with host Shiv Gaglani to find out why he likes the term, what qualities a potential investment needs to have to get him excited and what he sees as a key upside to having physicians working in a variety of industries. 

Mentioned in this episode:

https://www.loud.vc/
Underdog for Good Newsletter
Physician Underdog Book
Beyond Physician

One silver lining of the COVID-19 pandemic is a jump in enrollments in public health degree programs and that’s welcome news to Dr. Jan Carney, director of the Master of Public Health program at the University of Vermont's Larner College of Medicine, who believes the field needs a massive injection of personnel. “We need probably an 80% increase in people working in state and local health departments to have the essentials of public health.” As Vermont’s former Commissioner of Health, Carney knows the challenges public health officials face and brings those insights to Larner’s online-only MPH program, which covers the broad domains of the field from epidemiology to biostatistics to environmental health and also exposes students to the particular health challenges in rural communities. The program also prepares students for perhaps the biggest challenge facing the field: communication of health information in an era of misinformation.  To that end, Carney is urging more ascertainment of how different groups of people prefer to receive information and is suggesting a major change in approach. “Maybe we can start to think of public health communication more as a conversation than a one-way information flow.” Join host Michael Carrese for insights from a national force in public health into how education is evolving to prepare public health practitioners for their vital work in challenging times for the profession.

Mentioned in this episode: https://www.uvm.edu/publichealth/

Raise the Line’s in-depth look at the potential use of psychedelic compounds in mental health treatment continues today with a focus on the role they may play in helping people overcome substance use disorders. Our guest is Dr. Jeeshan Chowdhury, whose own mental health journey led him to found Journey Colab, a company combating addiction through psychedelic care while employing a unique stakeholder model that includes indigenous communities in ownership. “We have put 10% of the founding equity of the company into an irrevocable purpose trust so that the land, the traditions and the people that our medicines and our work are inspired from can benefit from it,” explains Chowdhury. He tells host Shiv Gaglani that indigenous traditions also inform how the company approaches psychedelic therapy itself. “When we look at their use, it is always done in the context of an expert healer, often called a shaman, and it's done as part of a very well-honed protocol and in the context of a larger community.” Check out this thoughtful discussion to find out why Chowdhury thinks of the therapeutic use of psychedelics as akin to surgery, and how Journey Colab is working with rehab center partners to integrate psychedelic care through clinical trials with the goal of creating an integrated treatment program.

Mentioned in this episode: https://www.journeycolab.com

Host Sherrilynne Starkie welcomes Sandra Markus, a marketing and communications consultant and the driving force behind the I Care for Rare advocacy campaign to the 50 Women Over 50 podcast.
 

As the mother of a young man with a rare neurological disease, Sandra is on a mission to improve the lives of patients, families and caregivers living with rare disorders. In this interview she shares how her life changed when her son graduated high school and his established health care and social support systems stopped almost overnight.
 

Sandra explains, “Zach is my son who was born with a rare disorder, and it gave me great relief that while I was working, he was in school. He graduated during the pandemic, and that was the turning point for our whole family.”

Sandra Markus
Sandra Markus is a brand, marketing and communications expert with over three decades of industry experience. She has worked with local, national and international brands of all types, ranging from public-sector and not-for-profits to private-sector consumer and technology. She’s an IABC certified strategic business communicator and is a Past President of IABC Ottawa. Her elder son, Zach, was diagnosed at 18 years old with CHD2 myoclonic encephalopathy in 2018. Sandra is sharing her story with the hope that together, the patients, families and caregivers of those living with rare diseases and disorders can come together and show support for much-needed healthcare and community care reform.
• Sandra Markus
• I Care for Rare
• The I Care for Rare Podcast
• CHEO
• Roger Neilson House
• Kiwanis Club of Ottawa
• The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch
• The Curse of Oak Island
• Next! The Power of Reinvention in Life and Work by Joanne Lipman

About the 50 Women Over 50 Podcast:
Sherrilynne Starkie started this show as a creative project with the goal of interviewing 50 women past their 50th birthday to learn how they see the world, what lessons they’ve learned and what advice they have for us all. She’s been blogging and podcasting for 18+ years as part of a successful marketing and communications career and has loved learning from all the women she interviewed. Subscribe to 50 Women Over 50 wherever you get your podcasts and please share it with your friends.

Elevating the voices and stories of women navigating the enriching complexities of midlife, '50 Women Over 50' is an empowering podcast that draws inspiration from the experiences of 50 incredible women.  

Today’s episode touches on some regular themes we explore on Raise the Line such as equal access to quality healthcare, provider burnout and the impact of AI on medicine, but on this episode, we have the welcome opportunity to take a look at these key issues from the perspective of a doctor-turned-entrepreneur in Brazil. Today, Dr. Bruno Lagoeiro is an executive at Afya, one of the largest medical education groups in Brazil, but he started out as a med student who was interested in solving problems he and his classmates were encountering. After years of experimentation, and guidance from a business mentor, the solution they developed was Whitebook, a mobile app for clinical decision-support that’s used in tens of millions of patient encounters every year in Brazil. Join host Shiv Gaglani as he draws out the details of Dr. Lagoeiro’s amazing journey to improve healthcare in a huge and diverse country that faces delivery challenges in poor and remote communities and a provider workforce being drained by bureaucracy. Despite these hurdles, Dr. Lagoeiro has an optimistic message to share about the power of providers to change healthcare and the promise of AI to allow them to focus more on the human aspects of medicine. 

Mentioned in this episode: Afya

Among the key qualities everyone wants in their healthcare providers is a love of learning and desire to serve others. That’s why we at Osmosis are confident Dr. Lewis Nasr will be a great physician and why we chose him to be the first guest in a new series of interviews on Raise the Line we’re calling “Next Gen Journeys.” The series will highlight fresh perspectives on medical education and the future of healthcare offered by students and recent graduates from around the globe. Starting with Dr. Nasr is a natural choice because of the many contributions he's made to Osmosis over the last several years including service in the Osmosis Medical Education Fellowship program and being a key contributor to our Year of the Zebra initiative. In this engaging conversation with host Hillary Acer, Lewis brings the perspective of medical students trying to learn in very challenging circumstances in which their personal safety and access to basic needs can be at risk. “It's another layer of obstacles that you have to get through. This gives international students a resilience and adaptability that they can bring to clinical practice.” Lewis also discusses his interest in hematology-oncology and reflects on entering the field at a time of remarkable clinical and technical advancements. “It's exciting to see cancer go from what is perceived as a death sentence to something manageable. I really hope to be part of the scientific wave of making cancer history.” We have no doubt that he will be, and neither will you after hearing from this thoughtful, compassionate young physician. 

Mentioned in this episode: 

https://www.osmosis.org/world

https://www.osmosis.org/zebra

https://www.mdanderson.org/

Today’s Raise the Line guest, Dr. Megan Meyer, has a pretty simple message for proponents of  psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) who are concerned that demand for therapists will outstrip supply in the coming years: don’t overlook the largest group of mental health providers in the nation. “Social workers provide more mental health services than psychologists, psychiatrists and psychiatric nurses combined and we’re embedded everywhere. I don't think the psychedelic renaissance can actually achieve its aims without us,” says Meyer, who is an associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Social Work. Meyers adds that social workers also happened to be well-equipped for PAT because they’re trained to act as guides in helping clients find their own voice and not impose their own perspectives or biases.  Getting large numbers trained will require collaboration across disciplines, universities and training institutes such as the project she’s working on with colleagues at the university’s Schools of Pharmacy and Nursing to survey social workers and nurses regarding their current knowledge and training needs related to psychedelics. Join host Michael Carrese for an expansive conversation about the role social workers can play in minimizing the risks and realizing the potential of psychedelics including issues of bias and diversity, community-based models of post-therapy integration and learning from the practices of indigenous societies.

Mentioned in this episode: https://www.ssw.umaryland.edu/

There's a relatively small number of people who have had the opportunity to create a medical school from the ground up, which is why today’s Raise the Line guest, Dr. Robert Hasty, is particularly interesting to talk to because he’s had that chance three times. Currently, he is involved in launching one of the nation's newest medical schools, the Orlando College of Osteopathic Medicine, in one of its fastest growing areas, Central Florida. “I think one of the things I've learned is that everything is incredibly connected at a medical school -- the facility, the curriculum, the culture, the clinical rotation partners...it all has to work together, so that's one of the things that we've done.” Hasty and his team have also designed a modern curriculum that’s taking a “lecture-less,” team-based, case-based, systems-based approach that interweaves clinical skills and knowledge of basic science throughout the four years. And on top of all that, given the school’s proximity to Disney World, you can see fireworks every night from campus! Join host Shiv Gaglani for this hopeful look at the cutting-edge of medical education.  

Mentioned in this episode: https://ocom.org/

If you get nothing else from listening to this memorable episode of Raise the Line, you’ll at least have the chance to do a breathing exercise in real time along with host Shiv Gaglani and his guest, Dr. Michelle Thompson, who is triple board certified in lifestyle, integrative, and osteopathic family medicine. Dr. Thompson has come to rely on a breathing practice for her own daily wellbeing and offers to do it along with all of her patients as well as countless medical students, residents and colleagues. In fact, as a strong advocate for provider wellness, she's created full-day programs for physicians and nurses to learn tools like breathwork for resilience and self-care. “Self-care is not selfish. If we are caring for ourselves, we are more available to others,” she explains. In addition to her role as medical director of the Lifestyle Medicine Institute at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Thompson is a national force in establishing lifestyle medicine programs in health systems across the country, as nearly 100 organizations have done.  Taking it a step further, UPMC is building a new hospital in the city that Thompson says is going to have a “lifestyle village” on the first three floors to facilitate the efforts of community members to choose healthy habits. Join us as we explore the impact lifestyle and mind-body medicine is having on patient care, employee wellness and medical education in Pittsburgh and far beyond in this perspective-shifting conversation.

Mentioned in this episode: University of Pittsburgh Medical Center

Today’s Raise the Line guest has created two new degree programs at Brown University, is a vice president and board director at one of the oldest venture capital firms in the nation, and was CEO at a groundbreaking digital healthcare company. Oh, and he’s still in his twenties.  As an investor, Morgan Cheatham -- who is also a third-year medical student at Brown University -- is applying his impressive experience, intellect and energy to the use of computation in improving patient care, and he’s encouraged by what he sees. A prime example is Abridge, a company that uses an AI audio system to capture and summarize the information patients share during appointments, allowing the doctor to focus on the patient, not on typing notes.  “A guiding light in my career has been how we take this sacred one-to-one relationship and scale it one to many, and Abridge is the company that does just that,” Cheatham tells host Shiv Gaglani, who also happens to be a successful healthcare entrepreneur and third-year medical student.  And while Cheatham is excited by the potential application of AI in healthcare, he notes that the medical community needs to move quicky to establish quality standards for its use. “How do we build the right validation benchmarks and evaluation criteria to know whether or not it is performing well?” Don’t miss this fun and fascinating conversation that also covers the necessity of embracing ambiguity, remaining curious and seeking diverse perspectives to navigate the rapidly evolving landscape of healthcare and technology. 

Mentioned in this episode: Bessemer Venture Partners

As researchers continue to explore therapeutic applications of existing psychedelic drugs such as LSD and psilocybin, there's been a parallel effort to create new compounds that produce the same beneficial effects, but that come without the lengthy protocols and regulatory obstacles attached to those currently criminalized substances. "If you could develop new molecules that were more targeted and shorter acting, you may actually be able to create medicines as potent as the existing ones, but administratively and medically more efficient so we can reach more people," says Ronan Levy, a serial entrepreneur in the space. After a foray into creating a business model for ketamine-assisted therapy, Levy is now looking to support the community of millions of people who are already using psychedelics in various capacities through his Non-Ordinary Therapy Company instead of providing the therapeutic experience directly. “Wherever you're having your psychedelic experiences, that's wonderful. We're there to help you get the maximum impact from your sessions.” Join host Shiv Gaglani for this fascinating conversation about responsibly pushing regulatory boundaries, whether hallucinatory effects are essential to therapeutic benefit, and the rapid pace of change in a field that holds the potential to, as Levy puts it, “displace most forms of mental health care currently provided.” 

Mentioned in this episode: 

Non-Ordinary Therapy Company

The Ketamine Breakthrough (book)

Distance learning continues to grow in popularity with most college students in the U.S. now taking at least some classes online offered by hundreds of brick-and-mortar and exclusively online institutions. We’re going to learn about one of the highest ranked programs in the space today with Geordie Hyland, president and CEO of the American College of Education. One way ACE sets itself apart in a crowded field is that 85% of its students graduate with no debt, which Hyland says is reflective of the school’s mission. “ACE was founded with a key consideration about return on the students' time and financial investment so we have some of the lowest tuition in the nation, but we also provide a fully online, high-quality experience.” Check out this informative conversation with host Derek Apanovitch to learn about ACE’s programs that are tailored to address pressing staffing shortages in healthcare, its data-driven approach to student support, and the collaborative interactions it facilitates among its 10,000 students. "It's fascinating to see students from very different geographic regions be able to share ideas and collaborate," says Hyland.

Mentioned in this episode: https://ace.edu/