Raise the Line

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...

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...