Raise the Line

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If you’re wondering why the U.S. has had such a hard time during the pandemic keeping frontline health workers supplied with the protective equipment they need, or what is being done to improve the situation, Mike Alkire has some answers for you. He is president of Premier, Inc. which helps more than 4,000 hospitals and health systems improve efficiency and clinical outcomes through supply chain m...

If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast

The mouth is a window to the body, says Dr. Abhishek Nagaraj of TruBlu Dentistry. Seeing the dentist can be an important component of preventative care, as oral health has links to heart disease, kidney disease, liver disease, cancers, and even COVID. Nagaraj and his partner, Dr. Anushka Gaglani, are co-founders of TruBlu Dentistry, which has multiple locations in Illinois. In this episode of Rais...

Healthcare needs to do a much better job of marketing truth, argues Dr. Keith Smith. Drawn to working with adult learners in the online world, Smith now oversees about 7,000 students across twenty programs, including medical assisting, health and wellness, public health, a military-only associate’s degree, and a master's in health informatics -- a field that Smith sees as key to helping citizens u...

“I think our educational model, our mission and our tradition are ideally suited for this moment of crisis,” says Dr. Mark Schweitzer. “The Wayne State graduate is always a doctor who rolls up his or her sleeves and gets things done regardless of the environment.” With a diverse student population that Schweitzer describes as coming from “the 99 percent”, the medical school he leads is intent on a...

Dr. Sachin Jain has always been drawn to taking "big swings" at tough problems, and the disconnect between care delivery and care administration is one of them. As a leader in various capacities in government and the healthcare system, he's tackled this and other complex issues at a high level, but he has also has maintained his clinical practice in order to stay grounded. In this engrossing inter...

Described as “Bill Gates' favorite teacher” in Fortune Magazine, Salman Khan started his now-famous Khan Academy by tutoring his cousins long-distance in 2004. Since then, Khan's non-profit educational organization has evolved from experimental YouTube videos recorded in a bedroom closet to a standalone platform that has educated tens of millions of people. In this episode of Raise the Line, Khan...

Starting a traditional degree program can be a “risky proposition,” says Burck Smith, founder and CEO of the student success and college readiness company StraighterLine. For many, it makes sense to have low-cost, low-risk entry points where they can test the waters and prove themselves before diving in. Smith has a background in public policy, where he first became concerned about the burden caus...

“It seems counterintuitive, but I believe we can use technology to enhance the humanity in medicine and get back to the deep connection with patients we used to have,” says Dr. Eric Topol, one of the most cited researchers and influential thinkers in the field. In a series of bestselling books on the future of medicine, Topol laid out that digitization of health information would lead to democrati...

Dr. Kathy Winston's passion is to help the next generation be successful in the delivery of care. The key to nursing education, she says, is balancing the old with the new. As we embrace technological advances in the field, we need to also keep the basic tenets of safety and compassion at the forefront. Dr. Winston started her 30-plus year career at age 19 as a critical care nurse, and then, inter...

“Nothing crosses borders in our polarized world like a willingness to care for critically ill children,” says Dr. Jeffrey Burns, a former medical liaison for the US State Department. In addition to leading critical care at Boston Children's Hospital and teaching at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Burns is also the founder and co-program director at OPENPediatrics, an innovative, open-access online com...

“If a patient feels like their doctor knows them as a person, they're eight to nine times more likely to follow through with their treatment instructions,” says Dr. Ken Johnson. Creating that kind of connection is more challenging in a virtual visit, he worries, not to mention the reduced opportunity to take the actual “hands-on” approach to care that osteopathic physicians practice. But schools o...

The “morass of healthcare misinformation” surrounding COVID-19 created the need for a clear, definitive voice to help fill the knowledge gap, says Dr. John Danaher. His company, Elsevier, stepped up. In response to the pandemic, Elsevier launched three COVID resource sites providing free information and research tools that were used by healthcare providers all over the world to help treat and mana...

It's time to change the narrative on menopause, says Jannine Versi. Women in their 40s, 50s and 60s aren't fading from relevance, they're discovering greater freedom and creativity, and looking to the future. Versi's company, Elektra Health, is facilitating this shift, offering a platform for women navigating hormonal health that features education-focused, highly individualized care. In this epis...

Mental illness was on the rise in the U.S. even before COVID-19 hit, and studies show a majority of Americans say their mental health has been negatively impacted due to worry and stress over the coronavirus. In the absence of definitive blood or genetic tests for mental health disorders, and given the acknowledged limitations of self-reporting and questionnaires, there is certainly room for new s...

You can make purchases, travel plans and dinner reservations in a few clicks, but being able to pay your hospital bill with similar ease is a rarity. That's where Cedar comes in, a "fintech" start-up bringing personalization and transparency to the notoriously cumbersome world of healthcare, especially when it comes to billing and payment. Among the improvements Cedar enables are personalized remi...

Community colleges are often described as the gateway to higher education because they are often the most affordable option. But they’re also the gateway to careers because of the many internship, certificate and shadowing programs that are typically arranged with local organizations. The Maricopa Community Colleges District, which serves 200,000 students on ten campuses in Arizona, is a poster ch...

"If we do things right, this will be your last job." That's the message Dr. Bradley Younggren has for physicians applying to join his company 98point6, which offers a text-based, AI-powered mobile app for delivering primary care. For Younggren, getting it right involves making doctors full-time employees with equity in the company, and encouraging them to innovate. "Providers know what the problem...

Over the course of his career, Dr. Thomas Mohr has helped start three medical schools and over 25 different residency programs, so he's in a good position to help launch the first medical school in Idaho, a state with a very low number of physicians per capita. In this fascinating talk, Dr. Mohr shares his take on the difference between osteopathic and allopathic medicine – a distinction that has...

Despite being integrally involved in making diagnoses and treatment plans, pathologists remain fairly invisible to most patients. According to pathologist Greg Osmond, some of his colleagues don't mind staying behind the scenes, but out of concern that the profession in undervalued and at risk for automation, he's sees an opening for greater relevance in having pathologists provide a coherent pict...

People with Atrial Fibrillation, or AFib, just have to learn to live with it, right? Wrong, says Dr. Aseem Desai. While AFib, which he calls "the electrical epidemic”, can be a challenging condition to treat, there is much that can be done to tame symptoms and improve quality of life even for those with "permanent" AFib. In this episode of Raise the Line, Dr. Desai talks with host Dr. Rishi Desai...

We've all heard the U.S. population is aging, but even so, this is a pretty eye-popping statistic: 50% of people born in the U.S. in 2007 will live to be 100. Perhaps more surprising is the lack of products, services and experiences designed for older adults to help them live their "best lives." Filling that gap is the new focus for two veteran entrepreneurs and business leaders, Alan Patricof and...

Dr. Lawrence Chin loves telehealth and sees it as a positive byproduct of the COVID-19 pandemic, for providers and patients alike. Still, he admits, “You can't learn to be a doctor virtually...it is a social job.” In steering 500 faculty members and over 700 students through the COVID crisis, Dr. Chin and his team have had to re-evaluate what is truly essential to delivering a high quality medical...

No matter what position they hold, from floor nurse to administrator, all nurses are leaders, and all health care professionals have a responsibility to use their knowledge to impact change. Those are core beliefs of AACN president Dr. Deborah Trautman and ones she has lived out in her impactful career. From ER nurse to policy leader Dr. Trautman, who was a Robert Wood Johnson fellow in Speaker Na...