Raise the Line

While serving in the army decades ago, Dr. Larry Benz noticed the importance of bedside manner and other nonclinical factors in determining clinical success. Keeping that top of mind has served him well over his 30 years as a physical therapist. In fact, he argues that these so-called “soft skills” can be even more important in affecting outcomes than clinical skills. Benz is the author of the new...

As a pediatrician, Dr. Ryan Padrez was frustrated by the challenges of navigating education and health systems to get his patients the services they needed – whether it was speech therapy, mental health counseling or other important care. That’s why he’s gratified to be involved in building a model for early education, developed by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, that integrates learning with heal...

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Dr. Chuck Cairns enjoyed practicing emergency medicine early in his career, but he soon realized he could have a bigger impact by focusing on how clinical care, education and medical research is organized, and how advancements in all three can be applied to benefit patients, especially those from underserved populations. That started him on a leadership path that wound its way around the country a...

As a young professional in Chicago in the early 1990’s, Tim Barry happened upon a poster in a store one day that simply stated, “You just can’t fake love, man”— and it was at that moment he realized he would focus only on things he was passionate about moving forward. After trying his hand as a tech entrepreneur, a friend convinced him to take a job in healthcare insurance, and he got hooked on th...

Dr. Jerry Balentine thinks a lot about the qualities successful medical students and physicians need. “I think all medical schools wish there was a way of testing who's going to be a great physician, but there's just no such test, so we use markers such as the MCATs to make sure that they're successful academically.” But he knows those markers don’t capture aspects of a person’s competence, charac...

“Science transcends politics,” says Dr. George Daley. “My hope is that physicians and scientists will, in fact, be a force for global harmony, and that will be a silver lining to come out of the pandemic.” In this important conversation with Shiv Gaglani, Dr. Daley, who is an internationally recognized leader in stem cell science and cancer biology, describes his collaboration with recent Nobel la...

Kids without regular access to healthcare are obviously at higher risk for developing health issues, but it also makes them more likely to face long-term consequences such as dropping out of school, having trouble finding work and ending up in jail. What’s the connection? Poor health access can lead to chronic school absenteeism, which can start a downward spiral. That’s where Hazel Health fits in...

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

“I think it's an enormous gift to pursue medicine and particularly academic medicine,” says former philosophy major Dr. Steven Scheinman, a distinguished researcher in the genetics of inherited kidney disease and dean of the Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine. The school in its current form is only a few years old, having not had a clinical system partner prior to 2017 when it aligned with...

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

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...