Clinician's Roundtable

The federal government has acknowledged the United States needs to overhaul its effort to develop better measures to counter pandemic flus and bioterrorist threats. So with nearly $2 billion committed, Dr. George Korch, secretary of preparedness and response at the US Department of Health and Human Services, tells host Bruce Japsen about how this new initiative should improve the system of developing and manufacturing drugs and vaccines to prepare for public health crises.

Five years after Hurricane Katrina, the horrific memories of disaster and devastation remain, but the healthcare system has created a legacy of resilience for the city's safety net and a potential national model beyond the primary care medical home. Dr. Karen DeSalvo, professor of medicine at the Tulane School of Medicine and a leader in the health system's post-Katrina recovery, tells host Bruce Japsen about the new community-based effort that has since been created to improve medical care delivery in New Orleans.

One of the most horrific disasters in modern history, the Holocaust, is being illuminated through a lens that is of particular interest to medical professionals, through a traveling exhibit called Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race. Nazism's roots in biology and genetics interlinked medical professionals with its advocacy of a eugenic program that ultimately led to the murder of European Jews in the Holocaust. What ethical lessons can we learn from examining physician involvement with the Nazi regime and what they called "racial hygiene for the greater good"? Dr. Matthew Wynia, director of the Institute for Ethics at the American Medical Association, stresses the importance for all medical professionals of understanding the role physicians played in implementing Nazi racial eugenics, and frames the ethical issues in the historical context of the early 20th century. How did German physicians succumb to the pseudo-science that formed the basis of Nazi racial eugenics, and what lessons can we learn from this? How did one of the worldwide leaders in the medical community fall from the forefront of medicine to orchestrate some of the worst crimes the world has ever seen? Hosted by Dr. Maurice Pickard.

Five years after Katrina, some mental health issues linger. Dr. Michael Greenberg talks with Rebecca Thomley, a psychologist and CEO of Orion Associates, based in Minneapolis, about the mental health situtation in New Orleans and her group's walk-in mental health clinic in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward, opened post-Katrina.

As healthcare reforms take place, changes are also in the offing in the emergency department amid demands that EDs be able to turn attention from treatment of routine conditions to disasters and other true emergencies. Dr. Angela Gardner, president of the American College of Emergency Physicians, tells host Bruce Japsen about tomorrow's needs for the emergency department, which will have a greater role as health reform is implemented and patients seek primary care.

Long after the clean-up process from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is complete along the Gulf of Mexico, we'll still be examining the health effects of this catastrophe. While there is a wealth of information on the health effects of specific contaminants, the effects are less known regarding mixtures of contaminants. What are some of the immediate and potential long-term health risks (both mental and physical) of this disaster? Dr. Maureen Lichtveld, professor and chair of the department of environmental health sciences at the Tulane University, School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans, Louisiana, discusses the role of physicians in this type of public health disaster. How are we identifying the populations most at risk of experiencing health effects from the oil spill, and what are some of the most effective risk communication strategies for these populations? What types of surveillance methods are being used? What can we learn from this disaster to be more prepared for the next? Dr. Maurice Pickard hosts.

As doctors and hospitals enter an era of healthcare that will demand high quality at a competitive price, factory-style efficiency is an answer that's working, at Seattle Children's Hospital. The hospital's president, Patrick Hagan, tells host Bruce Japsen about how doctors and hospitals can replicate the kind of factory efficiency used at companies like Toyota and Boeing to improve medical care service for their patients, and perhaps even boost their productivity and profits.

Though tort reform has been an elusive goal for some state lawmakers and Congress, health reform will bring grants to come up with alternative medical liability reform initiatives. But meanwhile, some medical providers have developed their own answers. Max Brown, Vice President and General Counsel to Rush University Medical Center in Chicago tells host Bruce Japsen about the hospital's mediation program that has dramatically lowered the academic medical center's liability costs and has become a national model followed by others.

Is there a psychiatrist in the house? There is often attention to a shortage of doctors, particularly in primary care, but the specialty of psychiatry is also in crisis. Dr. Daniel Carlat, professor of psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston and editor-in-chief of The Carlat Psychiatry Report, tells host Bruce Japsen about how medical professionals and the healthcare system can cope with and address the crisis facing psychiatry.

Only a few years ago familial dysautonomia (FD) was a fatal disease, but some "Rediscovery Research" from the FD lab at Fordham University in Bronx, New York, is turning this killer into a chronic manageable disease. What have we learned from familial dysautonomia research, and how might this help patients with other diseases? Joining host Dr. Bruce Bloom to provide an update on current FD research and treatment is Dr. Berish Rubin, professor in the department of biological sciences and head of the laboratory for familial dysautonomia research at Fordham University.