Raise the Line

A healthcare venture capitalist's take on COVID? The pandemic has basically been an accelerator. It's prompted a “digital, virtual revolution” that can be seen in the boom in telehealth and technologies like remote patient monitoring. Change that would have happened over several years or more, has happened in mere months. Join Cyril Philip of Providence Ventures, the venture capital arm of Provide...

Practicing what he preached in inner city Detroit led Methodist minister Mel Hall to pursue a PhD in statistics. Not your typical path, perhaps, but Hall had a vision to use data to describe the conditions he observed and seek improvements. When he then connected with Press Ganey, the South Bend, Indiana-based health care company known for developing and distributing patient satisfaction surveys,...

If there's one thing people in healthcare seem to agree on these days, it is that the use of telemedicine has never been higher. But after the crisis subsides, will the rules and regulations that severely limited its use for decades be re-established? "Cementing the gains" made by the technology during COVID is Dr. Joseph Kvedar's current focus, as well as developing national guidelines for medica...

Growing up, Dr. NiCole Keith's father used to tell her that her Barbie dolls could be professors, doctors, or lawyers, not just Ken's girlfriend. Both her parents also modeled a love for learning, all of which led Keith to earn four post graduate degrees, become a professor and clinical researcher and get elected President of the American College of Sports Medicine. As a black woman with a leaders...

In any given year, more physicians in the U.S. healthcare system graduate from schools affiliated with Adtalem Global Education than any other medical schools in the world. Even before COVID hit, educating providers at that scale was a pretty complicated undertaking, and the pandemic obviously made it more so. But the ability of Adtalem's schools to quickly learn from each other as adjustments wer...

It was when he lost yet another colleague to suicide in his young career that Dr. Adam Hill decided he had to speak up. Hill - who was then successfully in recovery from an alcohol addiction - had come close to suicide himself, but due to the shame imposed by the medical profession on providers who struggle with mental health and substance abuse issues, he had not yet shared his story. His subsequ...

How does COVID-19 transform a hospital? UMass Memorial Medical Center's impressive response to the pandemic has included a 21-step surge plan, seeking out lessons from institutions in the U.S. and abroad, and working with community partners to serve vulnerable populations. In this episode, Dr. Michael Gustafson -- one of the first surgeons to receive an MBA from Harvard - also shares what his hosp...

Bravado, stresses Dr. David Skorton, is not an asset. Knowing how to ask for help is. Through a long career spanning clinical medicine, two university presidencies, and heading the Smithsonian Institution, Dr. Skorton has a lot of experience to draw on when giving advice. In conversation with Dr. Rishi Desai, he traces his fascinating background and describes how two clinical skills in particular...

They share one initial in their credentials, meet the same professional standards and have the same passion to care for people, but there are also differences between MDs and DOs in their education and approach to medicine. On this episode of Raise the Line with Dr. Robert Cain, we'll learn about the philosophy behind osteopathic medicine and explore what educators and students in the osteopathic...

Even though Bunny Ellerin has built a career around bringing people and organizations together -- in fact she's known as "the most connected person in healthcare" -- she still gets apprehensive walking into a room full of business leaders she may not know. While acknowledging that networking is scary for many people, and seen as too transactional for others, she wants her students at Columbia Busi...

It’s a question that has troubled providers for years – how do you keep patients on track with behavior change between appointments? Longtime physician assistant and educator Ken Korber hit upon a novel idea: use story books to educate the patient’s young children about healthy behaviors, and turn them into “little health ambassadors” in the home. Korber, who is also president of the Association o...

The work of the Jonas Philanthropies spans some broad areas - veterans health, children's health, and nursing education among others - but the unifying theme is improving public health. Vice President Lendri Purcell and Althea Hicks, Grants and Programs Manager for Jonas Nursing and Veterans Healthcare at Columbia University School of Nursing, say to do that effectively, caregivers must understand...

Colleges and universities were struggling well before COVID knocked them for a loop because of declining birth rates and soaring tuition costs, among other factors. Now the on-campus model is in question, at least in the near-term. Taking all of those headwinds into account, Paul Freedman of Guild Education believes the institutions that shift their focus to serving working adults will be in a muc...

The gap is staggering. Just in California alone, 500,000 allied health workers are needed by 2024. Realizing it was time for new approaches to developing this workforce, a unique partnership formed this year with Kaiser Permanente and SEIU United Healthcare Workers to fund and facilitate the educational journey required. Leading the effort is veteran educator Van Ton-Quinlivan, who has her eye on...

How does a dermatologist wind up co-founding a successful electronic medical record (EMR) company? As Michael Sherling, MD, MBA tells host Shiv Gaglani, he tackled a problem he encountered in his own practice with "one-size-fits-all" EMRs, and designed a system that made things easier and faster for specialists. When new obstacles emerge for providers or patients, that problem-solving reflex kicks...

Wouldn't it be great if you could instantly learn from your mistakes? While that might be difficult for humans to do, it's the foundation of DreamBox Learning's adaptive learning software which analyzes student errors in real time and instantly offers up opportunities to learn and succeed. But CEO Jessie Woolley-Wilson is quick to point out the system is intended to be a complement to live instruc...

Going from a "9-5" company to "24/7" in just a few months has been challenging for Fulgent Genetics, but employees are happy to be contributing to the much needed supply of COVID-19 tests. Fulgent's at-home test kit was recently authorized by the FDA, and antibody testing is also now being offered. What role will testing play going forward, especially as companies try to figure out how to get empl...

Witnessing the "ceaseless wave of humanity that crashes upon the safety net hospitals" spurred Dr. Brad Spellberg, who is chief medical officer at the largest public hospital in America's largest county, to write a book describing the depth of the problem and offering solutions. The COVID-19 crisis has, unfortunately, highlighted the system's weaknesses and made his new book "Broken, Bankrupt and...

The COVID economy is prompting millions of unemployed Americans to learn new skills to help their chances of getting a job. That's obviously good news for companies like Penn Foster, which has been offering distance learning since 1890. To meet the strong demand for healthcare workers, make training more doable, and speed the transition back to work, Penn Foster has launched short form courses tha...

Dr. Vu Tran thinks doctors make the best salespeople, and he's in a good position to judge as both a general practitioner and growth leader at a booming workplace learning start-up. In fact, Tran believes the skills you develop as a physician to communicate complex information effectively and build trust with patients are valuable in almost any profession. As he explains to host Shiv Gaglani, grab...

It's understandable for people to have second thoughts about becoming a healthcare provider at any time, let alone in the middle of a pandemic. But despite the many challenges that come with nursing and other clinical roles, Dan Weberg thinks better training, new technology and opportunities for leadership make it a good time to take the leap. As a nurse with a Masters and PhD in healthcare innova...

This is a dicey moment for colleges and universities. The sudden and massive shift to online learning made necessary by the COVID-19 pandemic is threatening the traditional on-campus model. There is further danger for institutions that merely put lectures on the web and don't offer a compelling online learning experience. That's where 2U comes in. For the past 12 years it's helped some of the worl...

As 3-D technology started taking off in the early part of this century, Frank Sculli saw the potential it had to help people learn human anatomy, something that had been taught the same way for the previous five. His company, BioDigital, was the first to develop what's been called "the Google Map of the human body" -- interactive visualization software now used by millions of people worldwide. And...

Providers who have treated hundreds of patients with the same problem can develop a "gut sense" of how to proceed. But a new disease like COVID-19 does not allow for such hunches. Dr. Joe Habboushe knows that first hand, having worked on the frontlines in New York City ERs during the worst of the crisis. That's where "decision-support" tools like MDCalc come into play, providing all of the credibl...

The stethoscope has been around since 1816 and its basic design hasn't changed substantially in decades. But this tried and true tool has been launched into the world of machine learning and artificial intelligence in recent years largely thanks to the work of Jason Bellet and his co-founders at Eko. Today, over 50,000 clinicians in thousands of health systems across the globe are using Eko’s digi...