The Health Crossroad with Dr. Doug Elwood and Dr. Tom Elwood

Dr. Seymour Gers has garnered a tremendous wealth of experience and expertise in healthcare through the last 50+ years as an administrator, physician, and educator in the system. He has held a number of leadership positions in multiple hospitals including Kings County Hospital Center in Brooklyn, Harlem Hospital Center, the Montrose VA, and Rockland Psychiatric Center, among others. His impressive list of credentials includes positions such as Director of Psychiatry, Co-director of the PTSD Treatment Unit, and Director of Medical Education both for within the US and internationally. Most recently, Dr. Gers served as the Chief of the Partial Hospital Program at Queens Hospital Center and then as an Attending Psychiatrist at Maimonides. Dr. Gers was also the Representative of the Brooklyn Psychiatric Society to the American Psychiatric Association Assembly for 27 years. Dr. Gers is now semi-retired but remains very active in continuing education and policy around health and prolific on matters concerning psychiatry specifically. He also maintains a private practice in New York City, as he has done throughout his professional career. In this interview, Dr. Gers takes us back to when he was presented with pursuing a career in health and how the field of psychiatry has changed over the past few decades.

Dr. Moshe Ben-Roohi is board certified in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and Board Eligible in Pain Management and Electrodiagnostics. His practice focuses on non-surgical, personalized treatments for painful conditions of the spine, joint, tendon and ligament disorders. Dr. Ben-Roohi has helped thousands of people resolve pain and restore normal function without surgery. He commonly treats low back pain, neck pain, spinal stenosis, herniated discs, degenerative disc disease, sciatica, arthritis of the knees, shoulders, hips, ankles, elbows, feet and hands. He also treats patients with muscle and tendon problems such as Achilles and rotator cuff tendonitis, tennis and golfers elbow. Dr. Ben-Roohi’s practice is also one of only two in the country who use Regenokine, a new treatment for osteoarthritis and low back pain. In this interview, Dr. Ben-Roohi provides tremendous insights into pain and how personal it is, the critical role of holistic care and non-operative approaches to pain management, and interesting personal reflections on the difference between practicing with and without insurance boundaries.

Russell Benaroya is the co-founder and CEO of EveryMove, a rewards plan for health that connects health tracking apps, wearables and device data with rewards from health plans, employers and brands. As he drives a personal mission to improve the lives of 10 million people in 10 years, EveryMove is putting power into the hands of consumers that will fundamentally change the way we approach our “health”care. Previously Russell was the co-founder and CEO of REM Medical, a national healthcare services company operating clinics and research facilities for the diagnosis and treatment of sleep disorders. The Company was sold in 2009 to become one of the nation’s largest sleep services providers. Prior to co-founding REM Medical, Russell was the Director of Corporate Development for Overture Services (acquired by Yahoo in 2003), the company that revolutionized paid search marketing and created a multi-billion dollar industry. Russell has been recognized as a "40 under 40" leader in Seattle and frequently speaks and writes on the transformation toward consumer driven healthcare. He is a Techstars mentor in Seattle and for the Nike and Sprint accelerators powered by Techstars. Russell holds a Bachelor's Degree in Economics from UC Santa Barbara and an MBA from the Anderson School at UCLA. In this interview, Russell provides tremendous insight into the health system today and the importance of looking beyond the clinic, creating feedback loops, tapping into the quantified self, and others to fully realize the potential within health today.

Dr. Robyn I. Stone, a noted researcher and leading international authority on aging and long-term care policy, is Executive Director of the LeadingAge Center for Applied Research and Senior Vice President of Research. Prior to accepting this position, she was at the International Longevity Center-USA in New York City where she was executive director and chief operating officer. Previously, she worked for the Federal Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (now known as the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality). Robyn also served at the White House as deputy assistant secretary for disability, aging and long-term care policy and as acting assistant secretary for aging in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during the Clinton administration. She was a senior researcher at the National Center for Health Services Research as well as at Project Hope's Center for Health Affairs. Robyn was on the staff of the 1989 Bipartisan Commission on Comprehensive Health Care and the 1993 Clinton administration's Task Force on Health Care Reform. Her doctorate is in public health from the University of California at Berkeley. In this interview, Robyn discusses the difference between geriatrics and gerontology, intergenerational conflict, and many other critical topics central to the conversation around health today.

Dr. Ashwin R. Patel is a physician economist with a strong research interest in disease management, behavioral economics, and health care quality. In particular, he is focused on translating evidence-based academic insights into the actual delivery of health care. He currently serves as Chief Medical Officer of InquisitHealth. Dr. Patel received his MD degree from Weill-Cornell Medical College and his PhD in Health Economics from the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania. He also received a BA in Economics and Biology from Cornell University. In this interview, Dr. Patel talks about his personal motivation to become a physician and how he has used that passion to expand his interests and try to positively affect health in many other ways.

Dr. George Cernada is Emeritus Professor of Public Health at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Editor of the International Quarterly of Communication Health Education, a journal that he founded. He has extensive public health research, program planning/evaluation, professional training, managerial, and fund raising experience in public, private and academic settings. He spent many years working overseas on public health and population projects that involved implementation and collaboration with major bilateral and international donor agencies such as the U.S. Agency for International Development, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank. Among his various postings, he served as Chief Advisor to the Taiwan government on health matters. Dr. Cernada is the recipient of numerous citations and awards by the governments of Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Taiwan. His doctorate is from the University of California at Berkeley where he was awarded both a university prize for literary composition and a Poet Laureate Award.

Dr. Chris Marker is a leading physician in the area of concussions. After completing his training at NYU in PM&R, Dr. Marker joined the Sport Concussion Clinic in Riverside Ca as Director and has been working at the Community Medical Group of Riverside for 5 years. He is also intimately involved in sports medicine and pain management. Dr. Marker was recently highlighted on the news for his commentary on the death of a student due to concussion. In this interview, Dr. Marker provides great insights into the discussion around concussion and mild traumatic brain injury from an insider's perspective with personal stories and perspectives from patients and his practice, including Second Impact Syndrome.

Dr. Paula Friedman is a Professor in the Department of General Dentistry in the Harry M. Goldman School of Dentistry at Boston University. A specialist in geriatric dentistry, her research interests focus on health services and specifically on increasing access to oral health care for underserved populations. Activities include conducting oral health screenings for community-based, independently living elders; facilitating oral health in-home consultations for frail, home-bound elders; and assessing levels of satisfaction with services received by student dental plan members. Her research interests also include studying barriers to oral health services as perceived by underserved populations. Dr. Friedman’s publications have addressed issues pertaining to the management of elderly diabetic patients and also have focused on Xerostomia, the "invisible" oral health condition. Her doctor of dental science degree is from Columbia University and she also obtained two masters degrees at Boston University, including one in public health. In this interview, Dr. Friedman discusses common ailments in oral health in the elder population as well as ageism, interprofessional care, and other critical elements of this subject.

Dr. Gerry Petratos co-founded and leads Hiteks Solutions as CEO and guides its efforts on unstructured data analytics and the re-use of clinical information to support decision support, clinical documentation improvement, clinical research, and reimbursement. Dr. Petratos was previously director of clinical decision support and Global Head of Healthcare Data Analytics at Roche, where he oversaw data-driven applications of clinical information management in protocol design, graphical medical review, analysis, reporting and publications. Dr. Petratos also conducted Adverse Drug Event detection research at Intermountain Healthcare and the University of Utah Health Sciences Center as part of a National Institutes of Health fellowship with the National Library of Medicine in Biomedical Informatics. Dr. Petratos earned his Bachelor's degree in Biology from Cornell, an MD from Howard and a Master’s in Healthcare Administration and Medical Informatics from the University of Utah. Dr. Petratos heads the alumni network for the Biomedical Informatics Department of the University of Utah, the oldest such Department in the country, and is on the Board of the Hellenic Medical Society of New York.

Dr. Navin Singh is a Board-Certified plastic surgeon in private practice and an Assistant Professor of Plastic Surgery in the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He also is a clinical assistant professor of Neurosurgery as well as Gynecology. He is licensed in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC and practices at several hospitals, including Johns Hopkins Hospital which has been consistently ranked No.1 in the nation. His research interests include minimally invasive surgery, laser techniques, and computer/robotic-assisted plastic surgery. Dr. Singh has authored influential papers on cosmetic surgery in the most prestigious medical journals. He received his Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and Mathematics from Brown University and graduated at the top of his class at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He also holds a Masters of Science in Clinical Biostatistics from Harvard. After completing his plastic surgery training at Johns Hopkins, including a fellowship in craniofacial reconstruction and microsurgery, he earned an MBA. Dr. Singh is a firm believer in philanthropy, managing to spend about 4-6 weeks of his personal time each year on surgical missions to Ecuador, India, Peru, Philippines, and China. In this interview, Dr. Singh provides great insights into the ACA's effects on physicians, patients, and the system including his own personal experiences.