Conversations On Health Care

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Marc Edwards, MacArthur Foundation Fellow and Virginia Tech-based Civil Engineer who uncovered the Flint water crisis, where residents were poisoned from high levels of lead and other contaminants through the municipal drinking water. Dr. Edwards discusses his efforts to uncover the crisis, and his team's efforts to mitigate the water contamination crisis and related health issues.

Guest: Anthony S. Fauci, MD This week on Conversations on Health Care, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Fauci is world renowned for his work battling HIV/AIDS and discusses the current efforts at NIAID, along with other global agencies, to contain and control the Zika pandemic.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Dean Ornish, Founder and President of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute. He analyzes the new USDA nutritional guidelines and discusses the mounting empirical evidence linking sound nutrition and integrative medicine to the prevention and reversal of chronic disease.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Edward Ellison, Executive Medical Director and Chairman of the Board for the Southern California Permanente Medical Group. He is also National Sponsor of the newly-announced Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine which is being designed to train future clinicians based on Kaiser's coordinated care and value-based delivery model.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Aneesh Chopra, Co-Founder of Hunch Analytics, author of Innovative State: How New Technologies Can Transform Government. Appointed by President Obama as the first US Chief Technology Officer in 2009, he discusses the job of transitioning American government and health care into the digital age.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Kana Enomoto, Acting Administrator of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the division of the HHS dedicated to mental health disorders and addiction. She talks about SAMHSA's initiatives aimed at improving access to treatment, improving treatment outcomes and expanding the nation's behavioral health work force.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Jeff Williams, Chief Operating Officer of Apple. Mr. Williams is in charge of the tech giant's entire distribution chain and is overseeing Apple's foray into health care with the development of the Apple Watch, Apple HealthKit and ResearchKit, which are aimed at simplifying health and medical research by leveraging participation from Apple's 700 million users around the globe.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Robert Wachter, Associate Chair of the Department of Medicine at U.C. San Francisco. He is considered the founder of the "hospitalist" movement and is author of The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine's Computer Age which examines the challenges being experienced in the rapid transition to digital medicine.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Stuart Altman, PhD, Sol C. Chaikin Professor of National Health Policy at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. Dr. Altman is an expert on universal health coverage and discusses his recent work as Chair of the IOM Committee assessing progress on recommendations made in the 2010 Institute of Medicine Report on The Future of Nursing, which advocates for a stronger role for nurses in the expanding health care system.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Neel Shah, Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Harvard Medical School and Founder of Costs of Care, a global NGO dedicated to helping delivery systems provide better care at lower costs. He's also the co-author of Understanding Value Based Care, which seeks to promote cost awareness in the medical profession.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Harpreet Sood, Sr. Fellow to the CEO of the National Health Service of England. Dr. Sood addresses the strengths of the health systems of both the UK and the US, and discusses innovations in care delivery and public health initiatives that are poised to transform the quality of care in both countries.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Gary Cohen, 2015 MacArthur Fellow and Founder and President of Health Care Without Harm. His work is focused on motivating the health care industry to “do no harm” by reducing the use of toxic materials and fossil fuels to positively impact climate change.

This week, Mark and Margaret speak with Dr. Daniel Z. Sands, Founder of the Society For Participatory Medicine which seeks to advance the patient/provider experience through better health IT. Dr. Sands is one of the early developers of secure e-mail systems and patient portals for clinicians as well as patients, and advocates for transformation of the health care system through better integration of health IT.

This week, Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Raymond Hurd, Regional Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on the Medicare Open Enrollment period. He discusses the expanded number of plans available to seniors, and also warns of the threat of fraud and scams targeting the Medicare population.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Mollyann Brodie, Sr. Vice President of Executive Operations and Executive Director of Public Opinion Research at the Kaiser Family Foundation, where she oversees the non-profit's public polling efforts. Dr. Brodie conducts the Foundation's monthly tracking poll which charts the mood of the nation on a variety of health policies and provides unbiased polling data for policy makers.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Georges Benjamin, Executive Director of the American Public Health Association, on the need to support federal polices that serve to protect population health in the communities where people live.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. John Ball, VP Emeritus of the American College of Physicians and Chair of the Committee on Diagnostic Error in Health Care at the National Academies of Medicine, which determined that diagnostic errors are a major contributor to patient harm and need to be addressed by all stakeholders in the health care system.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Darshak Sanghavi, Director of the Preventive and Population Healthcare Models Group at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation which has launched the "Million Hearts" campaign to reduce cardiovascular disease. The 5-year campaign is CMS's largest experiment to date on pay-for-performance practice models and is supporting practices to follow the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association Risk Assessment guidelines to help patients avoid a million heart attacks or strokes.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Christine Cassel, President and CEO of the National Quality Forum, a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to improving health and health care through developing better health quality measures and data-sharing.

This week, Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Margaret Hamburg, Foreign Secretary for the National Academy of Medicine at the National Academy of Sciences and recent Commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Hamburg discusses the changes initiated at the FDA under her leadership and the enormous challenge of keeping the nation's drug and food stream safe in a globalized supply chain.