Archive for the ‘Partnerships’ category

Guest Post Dr Dan Handley

July 6th, 2022

I attended a video conference tumor board today as a guest observer.

If you don’t know what a tumor board is, it is an interdisciplinary team of professionals that can include oncologists, geneticists, and others such as pharmacists, nurses, genetic counselors, bioinformaticists, and anyone else who can help by providing their professional expertise.

Tumor boards systematically examine cancer patient histories, current clinical test results, and any other relevant information. As a team, they come together to propose the optimal treatment and support for patients based on the latest scientific information.

These are consummate professionals who are dedicated to understanding each patient’s unique situation and work together to provide the best care possible with the best outcomes combining their respective areas of expertise. It’s amazing to see such communication and cooperation. That’s not hyperbole, it’s the truth.

I understood all the underlying science since that is what I’ve been involved with for so many years in laboratory research, and it’s now what I teach, Not being an oncologist myself there were some learning opportunities for me on some of the clinical details. I am an information sponge, though, so I’m delving deeper into the clinical literature to make sure I understand anything that wasn’t completely clear to me.

Despite some people’s uninformed cynicism, we have thousands of dedicated professionals working together both on the scientific front and the clinical front in synergy to cure each person’s cancer if possible, prolong quality life, and at least minimize suffering. And along the way, gathering all of our understanding towards finding a way to cure as many cancers as possible.

It’s an honor to be involved in this continuing endeavor with so much promise and progress, and even more, to have students who want to participate in this amazing transformation of medicine into the 21st century.

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Four ways to improve access to Integrative Medicine Practices

November 13th, 2017

Licensure, regulation, medical evidence, and funding are four sure ways to speed up the process needed to allow integrative medicine practices to be embraced. If we begin with the assumption that money has a lot to do with everything medical in the United States, then we must look at the winners and losers and the WIFM’s?  (What’s in it for me?)  If you’re a practicing surgeon, and acupuncture or chiropractic care results in the patient not needing a surgery, that can be a financial threat to you. Let’s be fair, that probably doesn’t happen that often, but sometimes it does, and when it does, that’s money lost to your practice.

 

If you’ve spent four years in undergraduate school, four years in medical school, four or five years in a residency, and your educational debts amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars, the last thing you need is a clinical study demonstrating through medical evidence that thousands of patients won’t need your services, and your skills will become exponentially less in the demand.

 

On the other hand, if, like ophthalmologists who surround their practices with optometrists, orthopods did the same with chiropractors and acupuncturists, could that not create a steady stream of referrals for their practices?

 

Let’s face it, there is a role for all three of those professions, and there are skill levels in every profession and duties relegated to each that both overlap and potentially conflict. So, wouldn’t it be better to have the three practice as a team of professionals working together to help you?

 

“There’s not enough medical evidence”  has been the hue and cry of the uninformed for years. Ironically, once traditional medical evidence is thoroughly interrogated, it’s not unusual to find numerous flaws in even the most accepted medical practices. We’ve seen slanted reporting in even the furthermost prestigious journals where various drugs, procedures, and devices have been proven to be ineffective years later.

 

There are over 19,000 papers that have been written and submitted to medical journals in which acupuncture has been endorsed and proven to be effective, but there never seems to be enough medical evidence for the naysayers.

 

Credentialing is a very challenging area as well.  Not unlike the highly skilled surgeon with her medical degrees from the Sorbonne in Paris that is not permitted to practice medicine in the United States, there are sometimes economic and political reasons to limit the number of practitioners allowed in the United States. In my experience, by creating a hospital-based credentials committee that specializes in integrative medicine, the nay-sayers ability to discredit highly trained practitioners with different skills will become more limited.

 

Regulation may be the most difficult challenge in this discussion because, as we have come to know very well, political power can come from political contributions, and when it comes to regulations, those with the gold have more clout than those without. That is not to say that our politicians can be encouraged to be more flexible because they can.  All it takes is for hundreds of constituents to stand in front of a Congressional office to encourage change to occur.

 

So, what are we really dealing with here?  In 1910, the AMA put out a request for proposal to determine what should be taught in the medical schools of Canada and the United States and no physician would accept that assignment.  Consequently, a Ph.D., Abraham Flexner, did, and his approach was to eliminate everything that wasn’t already proven science.  From there we have evolved to a “heal to the pill” mentality where words like root cause and placebo have been dropped from the vernacular.

 

Finally, funding is the key. It has been proven time and again that integrative medicine practices can reduce health care costs exponentially. With that in mind, every bill that comes out of Washington ignores that fact, and funding for many of these well-documented practices is not present. There were over 5000 codes in the Affordable Care Act that were intended to fund such practices as acupuncture, but when the FAQ initially was released, it said, in essence, “Don’t worry about paying these codes.”

 

If you go almost anywhere in Europe and Asia and you will see integrative practitioners thriving because their value is acknowledged and embraced. Of course, we’re not professing that a massage therapist performs open heart surgery, but we do know that Integrative medicine can help to reduce costs across the board.

 

There are many good things that can come from Integrative medicine. You just need to be open-minded.

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On Cancer Research, Incentives and Cures

September 18th, 2011

From a blog entitled TTAG, The Truth About Genetics, comes a scathing indictment of the American Cancer Society. Truthfully, some of the contents are infuriating, but especially so, because as a co-founder of a research institute, I’ve lived them. First hand. When I saw that  the American Cancer Society’s two CEOs make a combined $1.6 million dollars in salary, I wasn’t shocked. Heck, the president of a 120 bed hospital who retired recently made almost that much. ACS is a big organization with lots of moving parts. It takes talented people to run big organizations, and they typically don’t work just for food.

From the TTAG  blog:

Today, ACS’s revenue is $1 billion, and the amount that goes to research is a measly 16%. Research is not the primary goal of ACS, and one of the great things they do is help patients undergoing chemotherapy by buying them plane tickets and paying for their costs. But, even when you consider other program costs like cancer treatment for patients, ACS has the lowest score for charities in terms of efficiency: 1-2 stars out of 4. (24.78%, according to CharityNavigator.org)

See also:

Once again, no surprise. The main issue that I had with the ACS was that their research funding, as meager as it is, goes to the “Good Ole Boys,” the group that is already part of the NIH/NCI club. Okay, you say, they have to have some standards. The Komen people don’t follow that same “Good Ole Boy” path, and thank goodness. They look for good science wherever they can find it.

So, what’s the real reason that I get upset? I sometimes think I’ve written too many posts about this already, but let me say it one more time: Unless and until we realign the system that currently is used to fund basic science in this country, we will never find true cures for cancer. There is very little to no incentive to cooperate, to work together, to encourage scientists to share and to reward them with grants for cooperating.  In fact, the entire system actively discourages it. It is a “Diva”-based system, that encourages silos of power around individuals.

Bottom line? We have a healthcare system that does not support wellness and prevention, but  instead financially rewards sickness and continuous testing and care for what may have been preventable ailments, and we have a research system that discourages cooperation and collaboration. We have a pharmaceutical industry that is interested in financial blockbusters…just like the movie industry.  We have a political system that caused our country’s credit rating to be downgraded and the price of money to escalate, and finally, we have an infastructure that is crumbling.

The good news, however, is that we still are the United States of America, and if we work together T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R  this can all be fixed.  It’s time for those of us who understand this to be heard.

Health 2.0 Leadership (1 of 2) from Nick Jacobs, FACHE on Vimeo.

Sandpaper sheets, green jello and patients who leave with infections they didn’t have when they were admitted. Hospitals DON’T have to be this way. Nick Jacobs FACHE reveals how, as CEO, he transformed a rural, critical care hospital from near bankruptcy to a consistently profitable, internationally-recognized model of patient-centered care and innovation. By creating a hospital environment that embodies healing in every aspect of its operations, Nick’s hospital also achieved one of the lowest acquired (nosocomial) infection rates in the U.S. for five years running.

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A Note From Nick Jacobs

October 24th, 2008

A Note from Nick Jacobs

On October 23, it was my honor and privilege to speak at the PATIENT-CENTERED CARE CEO CONFERENCE in Chicago with some very impressive CEO’s and Leaders. My topic was “Linking a Patient-Centered Approach to Quality Improvement and HCAHPS,” but my deeper theme was “Leadership with a Heart – Developing Love and Respect in the Workplace by Nurturing Staff, Physicians, and Patients.” For those of you who were able to attend, thank you for your kind words of encouragement and support.

As was explained during my introduction, I have made the very difficult decision to leave Windber Medical Center, but I leave with a commitment to spread the word both nationally and internationally about the journey to Patient Centered Care and how to achieve it.

Obviously, it is a risky time to attempt to begin this endeavor, but, because no time is ever completely safe, it was my decision to reach out to my peers and friends to offer my commitment to work with you with that same passion to help you achieve your goals regarding this effort.

Because Sunstone Consulting is an organization that has specialized in finding additional financial support for hospitals, we can bring you not only the formula for Patient Centered Care, but also the needed additional financial support to achieve your goals in this area.

Although I will not officially complete my assignment at WMC until December 31st of this year, my current schedule permits me two days per week to begin to develop new relationships with my friends and peers. Should you have interest in contacting us for a visit to Windber, or if you would just like to make inquiry regarding engaging us for work at your facility, please feel free to either respond to this letter by E-mail or to call me at the following contact address below.

Once again, thank you for the privilege of working with you on such a significant topic.

Warmest Regards,

Nick Jacobs

Nick Jacobs FACHE - Author of Taking the Hell Out of Healthcare

Nick Jacobs

F. Nicholas Jacobs, FACHE
International Director
SunStone Consulting, LLC
1411 Grandview Avenue Apt. 803
Pittsburgh, PA 15211
nickjacobs@sunstoneconsulting.com
jacobsfn@aol.com
Mobile: 412-992-6197
Fax: 866-381-0219

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