I hope to interview him again in the coming months. Baker has tremendous, relevant experience in healthcare. He was CEO of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and Secretary of Health and Human Services before that. Healthcare is a huge issue for Massachusetts, so it’s great to have someone at the helm with that background. Excerpts from the interview are below. The full tr...
The emergency department sees all-comers: whoever walks in the door. Working at this nexus comes with major responsibilities from educating patients about healthcare basics to making important decisions affecting life, death and yes, hospital resources. Making healthcare a better business for everyone is something that I’ve injected into my training all while honing my b...
"Dr. Oz has repeatedly shown disdain for science and for evidence-based medicine," said a letter the 10 physicians sent to a Columbia dean earlier this week. They say he's pushing "miracle" weight-loss supplements with no scientific proof that they work. The New York Ivy League school responded Thursday, issuing a statement to The Associated Press saying only that the sc...
Before measles was newsworthy, the original storyteller was Dr. Paul Offit. He was evangelizing when it wasn’t popular. And he realized his share of traffic. But it wasn’t the kind of attention any media outlet or organization seeks. As public enemy number one in the war on vaccines, he endured everything from personal defamation to death threats. Individually wor...
Pediatric surgeon Dennis Lund, MD, will join Stanford Children’s Health and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford on March 16 as the organization’s new chief medical officer. He will also serve as associate dean for maternal and child health at the School of Medicine. “I am delighted that Denny will be joining us,” said Christopher Dawes, president and CEO of...
Mary Hawn, MD, a general surgeon with a special interest in quality and clinical effectiveness, has been appointed chair of the Department of Surgery at the Stanford University School of Medicine. She will start July 1. Hawn is now director of the Division of Gastrointestinal Surgery and vice chair for quality and clinical effectiveness at the University of Alabam...
Author and surgeon Atul Gawande, MD, MPH, described how witnessing the untimely and inevitable passing of patients, friends and his father revealed to him the shortcomings of the American medical system’s and society’s approach to dying. “I learned about a lot of things in medical school, but mortality wasn’t one of them,” he said, addressing an overflow crowd March ...
Your body keeps time. Cells divide like clockwork. Cycles like sleeping and waking stay on track — for the most part, at least. So how does that work? And how can this knowledge improve our health? You’ll find answers in the new issue of Stanford Medicine magazine in the special report “Life time: The long and short of it,” which features stories about time and health...
Three individuals who have made a significant impact on Stanford Medicine will be honored Feb. 28 with the Dean’s Medal, one of the highest honors bestowed by the School of Medicine. The 2015 recipients, all Stanford alumni, are Mariann Byerwalter, MBA, who is on the board of directors of Stanford Health Care and of Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, and who...
Gambhir commented that while the FDA stipulates that manufacturers must report all deaths, injuries, and malfunctions associated with their medical devices within 30 days of an event, healthcare professionals (as with patients and consumers) only had to report such events voluntarily. All events are recorded in the FDA’s Manufacturer and user facility device experience (...
Held over two days, the Boston Children’s Hospital Global Pediatric Innovation Summit + Awards is designed to address unmet needs, solve problems and seize opportunities in pediatric health care. Thought leaders, including clinicians, health care leaders, venture capitalists, policy makers, and payers, will address the most pressing pain points in pediatric medicine. ...
Clinical research expert Mary Leonard, MD, professor of pediatrics and of medicine, has been appointed an associate dean for maternal and child health at the School of Medicine, effective immediately. Leonard will focus on pediatric research issues and will work with leaders at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford to improve its infrastructure for clinical and ...
If you don’t know Joyce Lee, you should. She’s a curator, design thinker and a firecracker thinker. And she starts things. This weekend she is birthing a brilliant event called the We Make Health Fest. It’s a maker faire celebration dedicated to health. Joyce has assembled grassroots makers who embrace the democratization of design. Centered at the University o...
Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is characterised primarily by fatigue but people often report muscle pain and sleep problems as well as concentration and memory problems. The symptoms affect people’s ability to carry out normal activities that healthy people take for granted. CFS can affect relationships, work and leisure activities. How do existing treatments for C...
The mission of Adelante Healthcare is “reaching across our communities to provide comprehensive primary healthcare that is accessible, sustainable, and of high quality, resulting in the vision of healthy people, healthy communities.” For her work in achieving that vision, The Center for Health Design named Saaty-Tafoya the winner of its 2014 Changemaker Award. She will a...
She founded both the American community nursing and the Henry Street Settlement in New York. She was an early advocate for nursing in schools. She coined the phrase “public health nurse” to mean a nurse who was integrated with the community. The Henry Street Settlement eventually became the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, she believed in education and outreach. Wa...
A slender, weakened Ebola patient sits alone, head in his hands, on the floor of a darkened room in an abandoned treatment center in West Africa. That is the unfortunate portrait of Ebola care in the region today — an emaciated system completely incapable of containing the rapidly spreading virus, renowned physician and humanitarian Paul Farmer told a Stanford audienc...
Welcome to the 2014 commencement ceremony for the Stanford University School of Medicine. To parents, families, and friends: Thank you. Your support and sacrifices have helped make this momentous occasion possible. To the graduates, congratulations! Today is an exciting day, a milestone in your career, and for many the start of what will be a new life in a new city. F...
It is my pleasure to address all of you, and thank you, Dean Minor, for inviting me to say a few words. I know that my remarks and the benediction that follows are the only things standing between all of us, and lunch, so I will be brief indeed. With just a few minutes to speak to you, I think it's best to make no more than two points, so here they are. My first poin...
Three Stanford medical students are among the 30 recipients of the 2014 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, which support graduate study for immigrants to the United States and their children. Each of the Soros Fellows, who were selected from more than 1,200 applicants, will receive as much as $90,000 for tuition and living expenses in support of gradu...
Global health expert Gary Darmstadt, MD, will join the Stanford University School of Medicine faculty as a professor of pediatrics. His first day on the job will be Feb. 23. Darmstadt, a former senior fellow and director of family health in the Global Development Division of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will help lead the school’s efforts to improve the health...
A change is as good as a rest, or so the saying goes. Working in Emergency Departments we are constantly changing. Many of these changes are directed at the processes within the ED, continually striving to find the “golden bullet” solution to the “four hour question”. Over the first six years of my consultant career the department I work in, like many others across th...
After 21 days of home isolation, Stanford emergency physician Colin Bucks, MD, emerged Nov. 14 to a kind of hero’s welcome, besieged by well-wishers and health professionals around the world eager to learn from his experience of treating Ebola patients in West Africa. Bucks said he feels he left a big part of himself behind with the patients and staff still grappling ...
There’s nothing that necessarily makes parents better paediatricians, or paediatricians better parents, but it’s true that experiencing different stuff can be a great teaching experience … And our guest blogger Lucinda Winckworth is giving is five great tips from experience on the other side of the baby gro… Since having my children I have experienced both the good a...
