Conversations On Health Care

This week, Mark and Margaret speak with Secretary of Health and Mental Hygiene for the State of Maryland, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, who also served as Chief Deputy Secretary of the Food and Drug Administration. Maryland has major reforms underway in hospital pricing and health care funding that incorporate incentives to reduce hospitalizations - and it's working.

This week, Mark and Margaret speak with Dr. Jonathan Gruber, Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has taught since 1992. He is also the Director of the Health Care Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research. One of the key architects of the Massachusetts Health Reform legislation, Dr. Gruber also advised the Obama administration on the creation of the Affordable Care Act and has advised several previous presidents on health policy. He has published over 140 research articles and has written several books on the economics of health care.

This week, Mark and Margaret speak with Dr. Deane Marchbein, President of the American Board of Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders). Dr. Marchbein joined MSF in 2006 to work as an anesthesiologist in MSF's surgical program in Ivory Coast. She has worked with MSF in Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Libya, Nigeria, South Sudan, and Syria, and as a medical doctor in Libya and Lebanon.

This week, Mark and Margaret speak with Dr. Erica Frank, President and Executive Director of NextGenU.org, the world's first portal to free, accredited, higher education, including university and graduate-level courses, which she founded in 2001. Dr. Frank is also Professor and Canada Research Chair in the School of Population and Public Health, and the Department of Family Practice at the University of British Columbia.

This week, Mark and Margaret speak with Dr. Humayun Chaudhry, President and CEO of the Federation of State Medical Boards. Dr. Chaudhry has been working to advance the proposed Interstate Compact, a new option for medical licensing that would speed up the process of issuing licenses for physicians who wish to practice in multiple states. The new interstate compact system is expected to facilitate licensure portability and telemedicine while widening access to health care by physicians, particularly in underserved areas of the nation.

This week, Mark and Margaret speak with Peter Speyer, Chief Data and Technology Officer at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. He is responsible for obtaining and managing the data that fuel IHME's research in global and public health, and he establishes relationships with data providers and statistics offices in governments, international organizations, NGOs and other organizations around the world.

This week, Mark and Margaret speak with Adam Dole, Presidential Innovation Fellow at the White House and former entrepreneur-in-residence at the Mayo Clinic. Mr. Dole is developing better interfaces between patient information and clinical practice from the unique perspective of consumer design. As such, he is illustrating novel ways in which non-medical professionals are helping to transform the health care system.

This week, Mark and Margaret speak with Regina Herzlinger, health industry expert and pioneer of the concept for consumer-driven health care. Ms. Herzlinger is the Nancy R. McPherson Professor of Business Administration Chair at the Harvard Business School. She was the first woman to be tenured and chaired at Harvard Business School and the first to serve on a number of corporate boards. She is widely recognized for her innovative research in health care, including her early predictions of the unraveling of managed care, the rise of consumer-driven health care, and the advent of health care-focused factories (terms that she coined).

This week, Mark and Margaret speak with Alan Weil, Editor-in-Chief of Health Affairs, published by Project HOPE - a leading peer-reviewed journal on health policy thought and research. Before that, Mr. Weil was Executive Director of the National Academy for State Health Policy, a non-partisan organization helping states achieve excellence in health policy and practice. Mr. Weil, an attorney, was director of the New Federalism Project at the Urban Institute. A frequent speaker and author on health reform topics, Mr. Weir co-edited several books including Welfare Reform: The Next Act and Federalism and Health Policy. Mr. Weil served on President Clinton's Consumer Commission on Quality in the Health Care Industry, co-authoring the "Patient's Bill of Rights".

This week, Mark and Margaret speak with Dr. Elizabeth Bradley, Director of or the Yale Global Health Initiative and Faculty Director of the Global Health Leadership Institute. Dr. Bradley is author of The American Health Care Paradox: Why Spending More is Getting Us Less, which examines reasons for America's extremely high health costs and poor outcomes. Dr. Bradley is a Professor of Public Health Policy at the Yale School of Public Health. She earned her Bachelor's at Harvard, her MBA at the University of Chicago, and her PhD at Yale.

This week, Mark and Margaret speak with Dr. Wendy Everett, CEO of the Network for Excellence in Health Innovation (NEHI). With a breadth of health care experience spanning several decades, Dr. Everett's vision for NEHI since its founding in 2002 has been to create an independent, research-based organization convening diverse members of the health care industry to achieve the common goal of addressing the most urgent health care issues. Under her leadership, this vision has resulted in ground breaking research on medical innovation, patient safety, health care spending and health care information technology, and has influenced significant national policy changes. Dr. Everett works with public and private policymakers to translate NEHI's research findings into long-term solutions that improve health care quality and lower health care costs.

This week, Mark and Margaret speak with Dr. Karen DeSalvo, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. Dr. DeSalvo is leading the nation's charge to promote, adopt, and meaningfully use health information technology in order to achieve better care, lower healthcare costs, and improve the overall health of everyone in America.

This week, Mark and Margaret speak with Sonia Sarkar, Chief of Staff of Health Leads, a national organization dedicated to building a different kind of health care system which addresses all patients' basic resource needs as a standard part of quality care. Health Leads matches college volunteer Advocates with patients who are grappling with unmet social needs - food aid, energy assistance, housing and unemployment status - all of which impact their overall health.

This week, Mark and Margaret speak with Dr. Harry Greenspun, M.D., Senior Advisor at the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions (DCHS), part of Deloitte LLP. He has held a diverse range of clinical and executive roles and is now responsible for helping Deloitte's health care, life sciences and government clients address key health information technology (IT) and clinical transformation issues.

This week, Mark and Margaret speak with Kevin Counihan, CEO of AccessHealthCT. the state-based insurance marketplace launched in Connecticut. The system has worked so well, it's being adopted by Maryland which has had a myriad problems with its own exchange. Mr. Counihan helped set up the Massachusetts model in 2006 and is considered a thought leader in creating high-functioning exchanges.

This week, Mark and Margaret speak with Ed Cantwell, Executive Director of the Center for Medical Interoperability, a not for profit dedicated to promoting interoperability of medical devices within the hospital setting and the electronic health record. The Center is launching an affordable communications system poised to entice hospitals and stakeholders to align their efforts to make medical device interoperability possible. It is an effort poised to save 30 billion dollars in wasted health care spending.

This week, Mark and Margaret speak with health economist Francois de Brantes, CEO of the Health Care Incentives Improvement Institute, which is seeking evidence-based pathways to meaningful payment reform in health care. The institute has just come out with a report card on health industry pricing transparency, for which 45 of the 50 states received failing grades.

This week, Mark and Margaret speak with Dr. Gary Puckrein, PhD, President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Minority Quality Forum, a not-for-profit organization that he founded in 1998. The Forum addresses the critical need for strengthening national and local efforts to use evidence-based, data-driven initiatives to help eliminate the disproportionate burden of premature death and preventable illness for racial and ethnic minorities and other special populations.

This week, Mark and Margaret speak with Lynne Thomas Gordon, CEO of the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA), the professional association that represents more than 40,000 specially educated health information management professionals who work throughout the healthcare industry. Their conversation will center on the organization's efforts on behalf of its members to serve the healthcare industry and the public by managing, analyzing, and utilizing data vital for patient care -- and making it accessible to healthcare providers when it is needed most.

This week, Mark and Margaret speak with Dr. Joseph C. Kvedar, MD, Founder and Director of the Center for Connected Health. Dr. Kvedar is creating innovative programs to leverage information technology - cell phones, computers, networked devices and simple remote health monitoring tools - to help providers and patients manage chronic conditions, maintain health and wellness and improve adherence, engagement and clinical outcomes.