Conversations On Health Care

This week, Mark and Margaret speak with Bradley Merrill Thomas, General Counsel and co-founder of the mHealth Regulatory Coalition, on the new FDA guidelines for mHealth App Development. Mr. Bradley is conducting a "mobile medical app road show" at medical teaching institutions across the country to inform clinicians and developers on the new FDA regulatory landscape in the emerging world of medical app development.

This week, Mark and Margaret speak with Dr. Darshak Sanghavi, Managing Director of Economic Studies at the Engleberg Center for Health Care Reform at the Brookings Institution. Dr. Sanghavi shares insights on the the Brookings Institution's attempts to utilize massive open online courses (MOOCs), social media, and Kahn Academy videos to better educate the medical workforce and the public on the myriad reforms underway in care delivery and payment reform in health care.

This week, Mark and Margaret speak with former Congressman John E. Porter, a partner in the international law firm of Hogan Lovells US LLP. He served 21 years as U.S. Congressman from the 10th district in Illinois, where he served on the Appropriations Committee, and as chair of the subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. Porter also chairs Research!America and is vice-chair of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health. Among over 275 awards for his service in Congress is the Mary Wood Lasker Award for Public Service, and The John Edward Porter Neuroscience Research Center for the NIH is named in his honor.

This week, Mark and Margaret speak with Dr. Rushika Fernandopulle, Co-founder and CEO of Iora Health and the former Executive Director of the Harvard Interfaculty Program for Health Systems Improvement. Iora Health is creating new, more efficient and cost-effective systems of care delivery to improve the health of the patients they serve.

This week, Mark and Margaret speak with Margaret E. O'Kane, President of the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), an independent, nonprofit organization that improves health care quality through measurement, transparency and accountability. O'Kane has served as co-chair of the National Priorities Partnership and is a board member of the Foundation for Informed Decision Making and the American Board of Medical Specialties. Modern Healthcare has named her one of the Top 25 Women in Healthcare three times, most recently in 2013.

This week, Mark and Margaret speak with Dr. David Brailer, CEO of Health Evolution Partners. Dr. Brailer is widely considered one of the fathers of health IT, having served as the first National Coordinator for Health Information Technology under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in 2004. In this role, David was the architect of the nation's effort to drive health care systems toward transparency, quality and efficiency.

This week, Mark and Margaret speak with Dr. Beverly Malone, CEO of the National League for Nursing, which seeks to promote advanced education and leadership training for nursing educators. Dr. Malone is also on the Advisory Board of the Office for Minority Health at the Department of Health and Human Services.

This week, Mark and Margaret speak with Former HHS Secretary and Utah Governor Michael Leavitt, founder and CEO of Leavitt Partners, a leading health industry consulting firm. Governor Leavitt discusses the rapidly changing landscape of health care and the need to deploy measures that will help reduce health care spending while still improving care.

This week, Mark and Margaret speak with Robert Pearl, MD, executive director and CEO of The Permanente Medical Group. As CEO of the largest medical group in the nation, Dr. Pearl is responsible for the health care of 3.4 million Kaiser Permanente members. The Permanente Medical Group comprises approximately 8,000 physicians and 33,000 staff members and operates 21 medical centers in Northern California. He was selected as executive director and CEO of The Permanente Medical Group in 1998. In addition, he is the president and CEO of the Mid-Atlantic Permanente Medical Group, which serves 500,000 members in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia.

This week, Mark and Margaret speak with Harvey V. Fineberg, President of the Institute of Medicine. He served as Provost of Harvard University from 1997 to 2001, following thirteen years as Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health. He has devoted most of his academic career to the fields of health policy and medical decision making. His past research has focused on the process of policy development and implementation, assessment of medical technology, evaluation and use of vaccines, and dissemination of medical innovations.

This week, Mark and Margaret speak with Jack Andraka, 16 year old winner of last year's Intel Science and Engineering First Prize. Mr. Andraka has been nicamed the "Teen Prodigy of Pancreatic Cancer" by the Smithsonian for the device he created for early detection of pancreatic, ovarian and lung cancer. It's cheap, fast and accurate in numerous blind tests. He has been awarded by the White House, the Vatican, and the Royal College of Physicians, and he was deemed by his Lab Mentor at Johns Hopkins as the "Thomas Edison of our times."

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with health law analyst Timothy Jost, Professor of Law at Washington and Lee School of Law, and frequent contributor to Health Affairs and NPR. They discuss the challenges with the rollout of the Federal Exchange and analyze the potential of the Affordable Care Act moving forward.

This week, Mark and Margaret speak with Cathy Schoen, Sr. VP of the Commonwealth Fund about her recent report in Health Affairs comparing insurance industry complexities and outcomes in the US versus 10 other wealthy nations.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Steve Lieber, President and CEO of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS). Historically, HIMSS annually hosts the world's largest health IT educational conference and trade show, attracting over 32,000 healthcare professionals to its US-based event. Lieber has more recently expanded HIMSS industry leadership efforts by launching similar conferences and exhibitions in Europe (in collaboration with the European Commission), Asia and the Mideast to promote HIT knowledge sharing and professional development worldwide.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear. He talks about the positive economic as well as public health impact that he expects from the Affordable Care Act, which he says will help more than 600 thousand Kentucky residents gain health coverage, create 17 thousand new jobs, and generate 15 billion dollars in economic growth.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Farzad Mostashari, Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Dr. Mostashari recently left his post as National Coordinator for Health IT at the Department of Health and Human Services. He talks about the continued quest to deploy health IT throughout the American health care system to improve health care delivery, outcomes and costs.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Steven Spear, MIT Sloan School, author of "Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System" and the award winning Harvard Business Review article "Fixing Healthcare From the Inside". Dr. Spear is an expert in applying Toyota's LEAN production principles to improving efficiency in health care.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Dennis Charney, Dean of the Icahn School of Medicine at the Mount Sinai Health System in New York. Dr. Charney speaks about the major redesign underway to transform their health system and medical training models to include big data analytics, genomics and other new technologies to improve the practice of medicine at Mount Sinai and better prepare the health practitioners of the future.

This week, Mark and Margaret speak with Dr. Chileshe Nkonde-Price, cardiologist and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation/US Department of Veteran's Affairs Clinical Scholar. Dr. Nkonde-Price is creator of Change Your Step, a digital project to engage African American women to improve their cardiovascular health. She recently participated in a TEDMED Great Challenges webinar on addressing health disparities.

Hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter from CHC's Conversations on Health Care program speak with Dr. Ruben Amarasingham, Founder and CEO of PCCI, a non-profit research and development corporation in Dallas, Texas that specializes in real-time predictive and surveillance analytics for health care. Dr. Amarasingham discusses the potential for greatly improved health outcomes utilizing real time health data analytics.