PRSRT STD U.S. POSTAGE PAID FRANKLIN, TN PERMIT NO.357 ON ROUNDS PRINTED ON RECYCLED PAPER Professional Development: Programming Hones Clinical, Business & Leadership Skills Education plays a key role in the daily operations of both the Ten- nessee Medical Association (TMA) and Tennessee Nurses Association (TNA) as the statewide organi- zations strive to ensure provid- ers deliver efficient, effective care of the highest quality ... 4 Wang Debuts 3D Laser KAMRA in Tennessee Last month, Ming Wang, MD, PhD, performed the state’s first 3D Laser KAMRA procedure to improve near vision in certain patients with presbyopia ... 6 July 2015 >> $5 FOCUS TOPICS PERSONALIZED MEDICINE MEDICAL SCHOOL/CME ONLINE: NASHVILLE MEDICAL NEWS.COM Breaking Through: Personalized Medicine Innovation Abounds in Nashville BY MELANIE KILGORE-HILL From academic powerhouses to high-tech startups, Nashville has become a recognized leader in personalized medicine. Nashville Medical News spoke to some of the industry’s leading experts to get a better glimpse into the treatment possibilities of tomorrow, and what that means for patients today. SCRI & the New Model of Medicine “In Nashville, we have one of the largest drug development units in the world,” said Todd Bauer, MD, associate director of Drug Development and principal investigator at Sarah Cannon Research Institute. “We really address every area of oncology through the clinical (CONTINUED ON PAGE 8) James E.K. Hildreth, MD, PhD PAGE 2 PHYSICIAN SPOTLIGHT (CONTINUED ON PAGE 6) Implementing Innovation Update on Vanderbilt’s Curriculum 2.0 BY CINDY SANDERS Five years ago, the leadership of Vanderbilt University School of Medicine embarked on a quest to broadly restructure the undergraduate training program to better equip medical students with the knowledge and skills necessary to excel in real world practice. With the backdrop of a rapidly changing health- care industry, the education leaders rethought, reworked and re- tooled the program. The resulting Curriculum 2.0 represents a move away from traditional medical school education to a more collaborative, in- tegrated, flexible course of study with enhanced case study and hands-on clinical experience. Aided by a grant from the Ameri- can Medical Association’s Accelerating Change in Medical Edu- cation initiative, Vanderbilt’s Curriculum 2.0 made its debut with the entering class of 2013. Bonnie Miller, MD, associate vice chancellor for Health Af- fairs and senior associate dean for Health Sciences Education, said at the foundation of the rebooted program is a commitment to creating master adaptive learners. “The most important thing we can do is teach our students to be expert, lifelong learners,” she said of the ability of these future providers to transform along- side the health delivery system. Now approaching the halfway mark for the first class, Miller highlighted some of the changes implemented with the 2013 class. New Look • More Information • Breaking News Alerts • Industry Events COMING SOON: THE NEW
Transcript
PRSRT STDU.S.POSTAGE
PAIDFRANKLIN, TN
PERMIT NO.357
ON ROUNDS
PRINTED ON RECYCLED PAPER
Professional Development: Programming Hones Clinical, Business & Leadership SkillsEducation plays a key role in the daily operations of both the Ten-nessee Medical Association (TMA) and Tennessee Nurses Association (TNA) as the statewide organi-zations strive to ensure provid-ers deliver effi cient, effective care of the highest quality ... 4
Wang Debuts 3D Laser KAMRA in TennesseeLast month, Ming Wang, MD, PhD, performed the state’s fi rst 3D Laser KAMRA procedure to improve near vision in certain patients with presbyopia ... 6
July 2015 >> $5
FOCUS TOPICS PERSONALIZED MEDICINE MEDICAL SCHOOL/CME
ONLINE:NASHVILLEMEDICALNEWS.COMNEWS.COM
Breaking Through: Personalized Medicine Innovation Abounds in Nashville
By MELANIE KILGORE-HILL
From academic powerhouses to high-tech startups, Nashville has become a recognized leader in personalized medicine. Nashville Medical News spoke to some of the industry’s leading experts to get a better glimpse into the treatment possibilities of tomorrow, and what that means for patients today.
SCRI & the New Model of Medicine“In Nashville, we have one of the largest drug development units in the world,”
said Todd Bauer, MD, associate director of Drug Development and principal investigator at Sarah Cannon Research Institute. “We really address every area of oncology through the clinical
(CONTINUED ON PAGE 8)
James E.K. Hildreth, MD, PhD
PAGE 2
PHYSICIAN SPOTLIGHT
(CONTINUED ON PAGE 6)
Implementing InnovationUpdate on Vanderbilt’s Curriculum 2.0
By CINDy SANDERS
Five years ago, the leadership of Vanderbilt University School of Medicine embarked on a quest to broadly restructure the undergraduate training program to better equip medical students with the knowledge and skills necessary to excel in real world practice. With the backdrop of a rapidly changing health-care industry, the education leaders rethought, reworked and re-tooled the program.
The resulting Curriculum 2.0 represents a move away from traditional medical school education to a more collaborative, in-tegrated, fl exible course of study with enhanced case study and hands-on clinical experience. Aided by a grant from the Ameri-can Medical Association’s Accelerating Change in Medical Edu-cation initiative, Vanderbilt’s Curriculum 2.0 made its debut with the entering class of 2013.
Bonnie Miller, MD, associate vice chancellor for Health Af-fairs and senior associate dean for Health Sciences Education, said at the foundation of the rebooted program is a commitment to creating master adaptive learners. “The most important thing we can do is teach our students to be expert, lifelong learners,” she said of the ability of these future providers to transform along-side the health delivery system.
Now approaching the halfway mark for the fi rst class, Miller highlighted some of the changes implemented with the 2013 class.
New Look • More Information • Breaking News Alerts • Industry Events
COMING
SOON:
THE NEW
2 > JULY 2015 n a s h v i l l e m e d i c a l n e w s . c o m
ICD-10 Boot CampThis fast-paced boot camp is designed for coders and others in health information management and compliance who are already ICD-9 proficient and need to maintain their professional credentials.
Two course options available for participants:Course 1: ICD-10 CM Boot Camp Course 2: ICD-10 PCS Boot Camp
Materials will be provided, and CEUs will be available (12 CEUs per course).
Speaker Monica Smith, RHIT, CPC, is an AHIMA-approved ICD-10 CM/PCS trainer and is a coding and compliance consultant with Kraft Healthcare Consulting, LLC.
This program has been approved for continuing education units (CEUs) for use in fulfilling the continuing education requirements of the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA). Granting prior approval from AHIMA does not constitute endorsement of the program content or its program sponsor.
August19, 20, 21
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Return EngagementMeharry Welcomes Back Dr. James Hildreth as President & CEO
By CINDy SANDERS
Stepping into his role as 12th presi-dent and chief executive officer of Me-harry Medical College on July 1, James E.K. Hildreth, MD, PhD, is entering new territory but on familiar ground.
After a yearlong process looking for the medical school’s next leader, the 11-member Meharry presidential com-mittee, aided by global executive search firm Spencer Stuart, presented Hildreth to Meharry’s Board of Trustees as the right candidate for the job. Following a unani-mous vote in early March to approve his appointment, the former Meharry faculty member and renowned researcher returns to Nashville to take the helm of the na-tion’s largest, private, independent his-torically black academic health sciences center.
In announcing the appointment this spring, Board Chairman Frank S. Royal, Sr., MD, noted, “Dr. Hildreth brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to Me-harry along with a great appreciation for our college’s legacy.”
For Hildreth, the decision to return, following his post as dean of the University
of California Davis’ College of Biological Sciences, wasn’t difficult. “What drew me back is the opportunity to play an impor-tant role in an institution whose mission resonates with me personally,” he said. “I want this to be my last job.”
Hildreth added he plans to have a front row seat for Me-harry’s sesquicentennial. “Me-harry will turn 150 years old in 2026, and I want to be around for that party … it will be quite a party,” he said with a laugh.
The Road Back to Meharry
Meharry’s mission to serve the underserved resonates strongly with Hildreth. “I just believe no matter who you are, you deserve the best care,” he stated. “Excellence and caring for people who are disadvan-taged are not mutually exclu-sive.”
That foundational belief was born of personal experi-ence. Growing up the youngest of seven children in rural Ar-
kansas, Hildreth watched his father suc-cumb to cancer. “My father died when I was 11 years old. I didn’t understand why he didn’t get more medical care,” Hildreth recalled. “When I was 13 years old, I decided I would do something about my concern over how healthcare was de-livered.”
A bright, engaged student who al-ways loved science, Hildreth credits a high school teacher with sparking his love of bi-ology. After graduation, Hildreth headed to Harvard where he received his degree in chemistry in 1979.
The first African-American Rhodes Scholar from Arkansas, Hildreth left for what was supposed to be two years at Ox-ford. “I understood the power of educa-tion, but to have all those people come to one place … one old, old place … and be surrounded by amazing scholars was a pretty powerful thing to me,” he recalled of the exciting juxtaposition of new ideas flowing through hallowed halls where stu-dents have learned for nearly 1,000 years.
By the time he arrived in England, Hildreth knew where his interest was leading him, and he was eager to study under several renowned immunologists at Oxford. “I petitioned, and petitioned and petitioned until the warden gave me two more years of support so I completed my PhD at Oxford,” he said. Persistence, he laughed, paid off, and he received his doc-torate in immunology in 1982.
From there, he returned stateside and enrolled in Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Taking a year off in the middle of his training for a postdoctoral fellow-ship, Hildreth graduated in 1987. “The same year I finished medical school, Johns Hopkins offered me a faculty position, and I remained on faculty until I came to Me-harry in 2005,” he said.
Hildreth’s first stint at Meharry was as a professor from 2005-2011. In addition
to founding Meharry’s Center for HIV/AIDS Health Disparities Research, the in-ternationally renowned physician-scientist received a National Institutes of Health grant to establish Meharry’s Translational Research Center. He also served as asso-ciate director of the Vanderbilt-Meharry Center for AIDS Research.
His groundbreaking work led to the discovery that HIV needs cholesterol to fuse with a host cell and has opened up new avenues of attacking the virus’ Achil-les’ heel, including the development of microbicides to try to thwart transmission.
During his time at U.C. Davis, Hil-dreth introduced formal fundraising to the College of Biological Sciences and more than doubled the amount of private funds raised. He created a biology postdoctoral program, hired 16 new faculty members, and opened a first-of-its-kind advising cen-ter for undergraduate students.
Hildreth succeeds A. Cherrie Epps, PhD, the longtime member of Meharry’s leadership team who stepped in to fill the void in 2013 when former president and CEO Wayne Riley, MD, resigned his post. His return to Nashville fit well both professionally and personally. Hildreth is married to Phyllis, an attorney who teaches conflict resolution at Lipscomb University. The couple has two children – daughter Sophia is an attorney in the Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps at Fort Bliss, Texas, and son Jay is a senior at the University of Oregon.
The Journey ForwardHildreth is clearly not content to rest
on past accomplishments. “There is a need to rethink where we’ve trained stu-dents and how we are training them,” he said.
“Interprofessional education is really important,” he continued. “If outcomes are the metric we’re going to use to mea-sure ourselves by, physicians have to be able to work as teams.” Hildreth added, “As a research scientist, in my world, col-laboration has been the order of the day for some time now.”
He stressed the need to join forces with academic and community organiza-tions to strengthen healthcare delivery. “Part of my vision for Meharry as presi-dent is to continue the partnerships and collaborations we already have and ex-pand on that.” Hildreth added another focus would be to implement innovative ideas. “Being a small, nimble institution, we can do some things larger institutions cannot.”
Calling himself ‘chief cheerleader’ for an incredible faculty and student body, Hildreth said, “I’m really excited to be back and look forward to great things to come. I think with the right focus, vision and plan, we’re going to do some amazing things here.”
n a s h v i l l e m e d i c a l n e w s . c o m JULY 2015 > 3
Wang Vision 3D Cataract & LASIK Center615.321.8881 | WangCataractLASIK.com
The doctors’ doctor:Dr. Ming Wang
Harvard & MIT (MD, magna cum laude); PhD (laser physics)
Performed surgeries on over 4,000 doctors
Inventions & Patents1. LASERACT: All-laser cataract surgery U.S. patent fi led.
2. Phacoplasty U.S. patent fi led.
3. Amniotic membrane contact lens for photoablated corneal tissue U.S. Patent Serial No
5,932,205.
4. Amniotic membrane contact lens for injured corneal tissue U.S. Patent
Serial No 6,143,315.
5. Adaptive infrared retinoscopic device for detecting ocular aberrations U.S. Utility Patent
Application Serial No. 11/642,226.
6. Digital eye bank for virtual clinical trial U.S. Utility Patent
Application Serial No. 11/585,522.
7. Pulsed electromagnetic fi eld therapy for nonhealing corneal ulcer U.S.patent fi led.
8. A whole-genome method of assaying in vivo DNA protein interaction and gene expression regulation U.S. patent fi led
Dr. Ming Wang, Harvard & MIT (MD, magna cum laude); PhD (laser physics), is one of the few cataract and LASIK surgeons in the world today who holds a doc-torate degree in laser physics. He has performed over 55,000 procedures, including on over 4,000 doctors (hence he has been referred to as “the doctors’ doctor”). Dr. Wang currently is the only surgeon in the state who offers 3D LASIK (age 18+), 3D Forever Young Lens surgery (age 40+) and 3D laser cataract surgery (age 60+). He has published 7 textbooks, over 100 papers including one in the world-renowned journal “Nature”, holds several U.S. patents and performed the world’s fi rst laser-assisted artifi cial cornea implantation. He has
received an achievement award from the American Academy of Ophthalmology, and a Lifetime
Achievement Award from the American Chinese Physician Association. Dr. Wang founded a 501c(3) non-profi t charity, the Wang Foundation for Sight Restoration (www.Wangfounda-tion.com), which to date has helped patients from over 40 states in the U.S. and 55 countries worldwide, with all sight restoration surgeries performed free-of-charge.
Wang Vision 3D Cataract & LASIK Center615.321.8881 | WangCataractLASIK.com
AMNIOTIC MEMBRANECONTACT LENS
Dr. Wang’s inventionU.S. patents:
5,932,205 & 6,143,315
Used by over 1,000 eye doctors to restore sight.
Amnioticmembraneis obtained afterthe baby’s birth
4 > JULY 2015 n a s h v i l l e m e d i c a l n e w s . c o m
Where advanced cytogenetic technology meets old-fashioned servicewww.geneticsassociates.com
Genetics Associates Inc. is CAP accredited, CLIA and State of Tennessee Licensed.
Our professional staff includes fi ve American Board of Medical Genetics (ABMG) certifi ed directors.
Education plays a key role in the daily operations of both the Tennessee Medical Association (TMA) and Tennessee Nurses Association (TNA) as the statewide orga-nizations strive to ensure providers deliver efficient, effective care of the highest qual-ity.
TMA & CME“We’ve got a lot going on with CME
and have really ramped up over the last year,” said Dave Chaney, director of Communications for TMA. In fact, he noted, the organization recently completed a 20-month process through the Ac-creditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to create original CME content.
TMA received provisional accredi-tation last November. At the end of two years, they will undergo another ACCME review to receive a four-year standard ac-creditation or six-year accreditation with commendation. This expanded capability is in addition to the organization’s long-
standing accreditation to approve other’s CME programming.
Angie Madden, director of Practice Solutions for TMA, explained, “We felt as a medical society that we needed to be more nimble and be able to provide education to physicians in Tennes-see and particularly our members.” She added much of TMA’s content focuses on broad issues impacting all physicians but noted specialty-specific breakouts are featured at the annual meeting or in col-laboration with other organizations as needed to meet physician needs.
Chaney said, “Physicians have a lot of sources out there where they can get CME. We want all physicians in Tennes-see to look to TMA as the authoritative source for education on the most impor-tant and timely topics affecting their pro-fession.” He added, “TMA is plugged in on every legislative and regulatory issue. When we combine what’s happening on a macro level and state level with on-the-ground clinical healthcare delivery, we’re in a unique position to deliver CME.”
Chaney noted the organization uses
a mix of online and in-person formats to deliver programming and featured more than 21 hours of onsite education at the April annual meeting. He added some programs, such as this summer’s ICD-10 Coding Camps, are presented in a road-show format with a series of workshops being held at key points across the state.
Madden said the association is con-tinually adding new offerings and is rolling out two new options this month. The first, Tennessee Health Care Innovations Initia-tive 101 is an overview of new payment models by the state. The second one-hour course, Tennessee Physician Employment Contracting, helps physicians know what to look for when crafting or signing contracts and is presented by TMA’s legal counsel.
For a complete list of options, go on-line to tnmed.org and click on Professional Development.
TNA & CNEThe staff of the Tennessee Nurses As-
sociation is also passionate about ensuring providers are equipped to face the chal-lenges of delivering quality care in an era of reform.
“We are accredited by the American Nurses Credentialing Center as an ap-prover and provider of continuing nursing edu-cation,” explained TNA Executive Director Sha-ron Adkins, MSN RN, who added her organi-zation is the only one in Tennessee that can ap-prove CNE courses.
She continued, “We’ve got a whole com-mittee of reviewers, and they make sure the program meets the ANCC standards for quality of education and objectives and provides the learner with expected outcomes.”
Adkins said the association also col-laborates with others to meet needs. Working with the TMA, she noted, “We partnered with them last fall on a diabetes workshop and are currently partnering on the ICD-10 workshops being held across the state.”
In addition, the organization teams up with the Tennessee Association of Student Nurses to provide continuing education at the annual conference each fall. This year’s meeting – Nursing Ethics: Commitment, Compassion, Quality Care – will be held Oct. 23-25 at the Franklin Marriott Cool Springs. To register, go to tnaonline.org.
John Ingram Institute for
Physician LeadershipIn addition to their new course of-
ferings, the TMA recently rebranded the Physician Leadership College as the John Ingram Institute for Physician Leadership, honoring the East Tennessee internist and former president who helped create
and launch the program. In its new in-carnation, physicians will now have two track options – the Leadership Immersion Weekend Retreat and the nine-month Physician Leadership Lab.
Madden noted the first class gradu-ated from the Physician Leadership College in 2008 with the eighth class grad-uating this past May at the 2015 annual meeting. While the core leadership topics of negotiation, decision-making, conflict resolution, collaboration and influence, medical advocacy, media and communi-cations, resonated strongly with those who participated, Madden said the nine-month commitment made it difficult or impossible for some physicians to tap into the impact-ful curriculum.
“What we decided to do was create a weekend emersion where they would get all the training but in an accelerated, more convenient platform,” Madden explained.
To be eligible, an applicant must be a member of the TMA. Madden and Chaney noted the cost is kept low to make the program accessible. “We underwrite 90 percent of the costs through grants,” Madden added.
The next offering of the Leadership Immersion Weekend runs July 23-26 at the Hutton Hotel in Nashville. Those inter-ested in attending or nominating someone to attend should go online to tnmed.org/leadership for details and an application.
The new Physician Leadership Lab, which does span nine months, focuses on team-based care, safety and quality initia-tives and includes LifeWings’ Lean plus TeamSTEPPS process improvement tools and programming. Madden pointed to changes tied to value-based reimburse-ment as an impetus to launch this new leadership offering.
“We wanted to create this new track to address the changing healthcare land-scape,” said Madden, adding the goal is “to really help equip and train physicians with the skill set to practice medicine with all these new initiatives.”
Additionally, she noted the Physi-cian Leadership Lab includes a hands-on project for participants. “They will pick a project in their community that they are passionate about and will work to impact outcomes, processes, and safety. They will take skills they have learned in Team-STEPPS-Lean Healthcare and put them into practice.”
While details were still being fleshed out at press time, the plan is to launch in the fall and run through April with gradu-ation at the 2016 annual meeting. Madden said the program would be a mix of live sessions, webinars and conference calls.
“With team models emerging, physi-cians need a different type of leadership skills they might not have needed in the past,” said Chaney. “Taking care of pa-tients is number one, but any time you have physicians building skill sets, that’s going to benefit patients.”
Professional Development: Programming Hones Clinical, Business & Leadership Skills
Dave Chaney
Angie Madden
Sharon Adkins, MSN,
RN
n a s h v i l l e m e d i c a l n e w s . c o m JULY 2015 > 5
By CINDy SANDERS
Vanderbilt University Medical Cen-ter’s mission is to shape the future of health and healthcare. As an academic cam-pus, education is a central component of moving that mission forward … not only through the innovative curriculum offered to students attending the prestigious medi-cal school but also by providing a robust menu of continuing medical education (CME) offerings open to practitioners within and outside the Vanderbilt network.
“Vanderbilt is considered to be one of the top 10 research institutions in the U.S.,” said Don Moore, PhD, director of the Of-fice for Continuous Pro-fessional Development. “Along with that ranking, comes an obligation,” he continued. “We help practitioners gain access to the latest information that they can take back to their practices. We have a community-based mission in that respect.”
Moore, who is also a professor of Medical Education and Administration for Vanderbilt University School of Medi-cine, said CME programming focuses on four areas – clinical, teaching techniques, research and health systems administration
– with the majority of offerings being clini-cally focused.
“When you design a CME activity, you want to design it for effectiveness,” he noted. “To do that, you really need to know what the learning needs are.”
Moore said departments and divisions at VUMC help drive content by tapping into data, research and other information resources to address those needs and dissemi-nate the latest advances in evidence-based medicine and underscore best practices, which is critical in an era where value, effi-ciency and quality are redefining how health-care is delivered. “As the healthcare system is changing, we obviously need to help physi-cians understand how those changes will im-pact what they do,” Moore added.
While most courses are geared to physicians, Moore said anyone associated with a particular disease area is welcome to attend. Looking back at the past year, he estimated attendance was about 75 per-cent physicians and 25 percent other health professionals. “We have a large number of nurses who attend our courses,” he said. “They can transfer our credit to their nurs-ing requirements.”
Moore continued, “We recognize healthcare is delivered in teams. Our long term goal is to offer interprofessional educa-tion where doctors and nurses are not just sitting in the same room listening to physi-
cian content but where the content actually contains information for both of them, and they are working together.”
A key area for Office of Continuous Professional Development is maintenance of certification. In 1999, specialty societies began rolling out a new requirement for specialty certification in which physicians were required to conduct a quality im-provement project that would impact their patients. However, Moore noted, that new requirement really began being broadly en-forced in 2014.
“We now have the responsibility in our office to provide physicians with sup-port for their quality improvement projects. Our goal is to help physicians provide the best possible care to their patients. Our in-volvement in maintenance of certification is another way to do that,” he said.
Moore’s office posts information about upcoming programs online which physicians and other health professionals can access by going to cme.vanderbilt.edu. Registration fees, where applicable, and details on location, target audience and course overview are available under the ‘CME Activities’ tab on the website.
Vanderbilt University School of Medi-cine is accredited with commendation by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education to provide continuing medical education for physicians.
Jeff McCorpin Art Van BurenAndrew McDonald
LBMCHealthcare Services
Andrew Bissonnette Lisa Nix Sharon Powlus Brian Tate
Meet Some of the Faces Behind Our Healthcare Experience.
Greg brings over 25 years of experience in public accounting and healthcare to his role as leader of LBMC’s healthcare practice. He initiated the development of the firm’s healthcare practice several years ago and is responsible for the firm’s strategic direction, development of solutions and service delivery to address the ever changing needs of the healthcare industry. Greg is a partner in the firm’s accounting and assurance practice, serving on a number of healthcare engagements, which include for-profit and not-for-profit healthcare organizations, of all types of specialty.
Greg was recently recognized by the Nashville Post as one of Middle Tennessee’s “Accounting’s Finest’, by the Nashville Business Journal as one of Nashville’s “Power Leaders in Accounting” and by the Nashville Medical News “InCharge Healthcare” as one of the key decision-makers in the healthcare industry.
Lifelong LearningTapping into Vanderbilt’s Diverse Array of CME Opportunities
Dr. Don Moore
Two Quick Questions for Dean Taylor
Cathy Taylor, DrPH, MSN, RN, dean and professor for the Gordon E. Inman College of Health Sciences & Nursing at Belmont University, recently shared her thoughts on preparing the next generation of providers.
Q: With the number of health sciences degrees under the Belmont umbrella, has the university embraced interprofessional education?
A: “Yes … and in fact the diversity of our programs, coupled with our state-of-the-art simulation and practice laboratories, create rich opportunities for cross-disciplinary IPE at Belmont that are simply not available to students in most universities.
Q: How does this training translate into clinical practice after graduation?
A: “We continually monitor practice standards and survey employers to ensure that our graduates are equipped with the most current skills. At present, this translates into robust practice and residency experiences with area physicians and with our local med school partners at Meharry and Vanderbilt. This is important to all of us. Strategic initiatives are underway to increase these traditional training opportunities and further supplement them with laboratory practice, particularly in high risk areas like obstetrics and pediatrics.”
Dr. Cathy Taylor
6 > JULY 2015 n a s h v i l l e m e d i c a l n e w s . c o m
By CINDy SANDERS
Last month, Ming Wang, MD, PhD, per-formed the state’s first 3D Laser KAMRA procedure to improve near vision in certain patients with presby-opia.
The KAMRA inlay by AcuFocus, which received approval from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration in April, is the first implantable device for correction of near vision in patients who have not had cataract surgery and don’t need corrective lenses for distance vision.
Wang said about 25 percent of the pop-ulation is nearsighted, 25 percent farsighted, and the remaining 50 percent don’t typically need glasses … until they hit their 40s and begin to experience presbyopia, a loss of the ability to change the focusing power of the eye that occurs naturally with age.
“As they get to age 40-45, they need reading glasses,” Wang noted. “To them, it’s a dramatic change of quality of life,” he said of those who haven’t previously dealt with eye problems. He added that up until now, there hasn’t been an effective surgical solution to treat presbyopia other than inva-sive lens surgery.
For many, the KAMRA inlay might offer a new answer. The ring-shaped,
opaque device, which is implanted in the cornea of one eye, blocks peripheral light rays while allowing central light rays to pass through a small opening in the center of the device to focus near vision. While the ability to see small print is improved in the eye that has the implant, the distance vision of the two eyes working together isn’t affected so patients get the best of both worlds.
“When we implant a pinhole device, such as the 3D Laser KAMRA, it focuses entrance light into a narrow beam, which greatly increases the depth of focus or range of vision for our patients,” Wang said. “When you focus … when you shrink the aperture … every cameraman knows when you do that, you increase the depth of field,”
explained Wang. “You can actually see further and see closer.” It’s the same concept for the KAMRA inlay, he added.
Before approving the KAMRA inlay, the FDA re-viewed results of three clini-cal studies. At one year after implantation, 83.5 percent of patients in the main study achieved uncorrected near vi-sual acuity of 20/40 or better.
In addition to not being intended for use in patients who have had cataract sur-gery, other exclusion criteria include severe dry eye, an active eye infection or inflam-
mation, insufficient corneal thickness, active autoimmune or connective tissue disease, and uncontrolled glaucoma or diabetes, among others.
Expanded UseCurrently, the KAMRA labeling warns
the safety and effectiveness in patients who have had LASIK or other refractive pro-cedures are unknown. While the 11 proce-dures Wang performed on June 9 met the original FDA criteria, he believes with phy-sician discretion and additional research, the use could be expanded.
LASIK, he noted, isn’t usually a pre-ferred option for patients after age 40-45. While the original problem might be cor-rected, patients of that age almost im-mediately begin to need reading glasses. “LASIK is to correct three of the four ocular conditions – myopia, hyperopia, and astig-matism,” he said, adding it has been an on-
going challenge to address presbyopia. “As a result, our baby boomer patients have been left on the sidelines of modern laser vi-sion correction treatment.”
Wang said a monovision approach – where one eye is for distance and the other for near vision – is sometimes tried. “The problem with that is I’m intentionally mov-ing the focal point of the non-dominate eye closer. You can read better, alright, but that eye will be blurry for distance,” he ex-plained. Wang added the symmetry of both eyes is important for depth perception. “It works for some people, but it doesn’t work for others … they don’t like the asymme-try,” he added of monovision.
That, he continued, is potentially the beauty of being able to insert the KAMRA inlay in patients who have previously had LASIK. “You’re not introducing asymme-try between the two eyes. I simply add on top of what you have … I’m not taking any-thing away,” he said.
Wang concluded, “We’ve been looking for a solution to add to our capabilities. That’s the dream … how can you add reading capa-bility in an eye with a lens that’s inflexible?”
Potentially, 3D Laser KAMRA could offer that solution to expand near vision beyond the current FDA approval for the millions who only need reading glasses to an even larger group of patients who have one of the three other ocular conditions plus presbyopia.
“We are excited to be the first again,” Wang said of debuting the new laser surgery option. “The focus of 21st century medicine now is to improve our sight even as we age to enable our patients to see better and lon-ger. It improves the quality of life for our patients.”Airport Parking
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Wang Debuts 3D Laser KAMRA in Tennessee
Dr. Ming Wang prepares to insert Tennessee’s first KAMRA ring to improve near vision in a patient with presbyopia.
“They had one preclinical year instead of the traditional two,” she said. “The clerkship year got moved to the second year from the third.” The first phase, Foundations of Medical Knowledge, integrates biomedical, behavioral, social and systems sciences, medical humanities, and physical diagnosis. The core clerkship phase, Foundations of Clinical Care, consists of six clerkships over a 41-week period and includes an emphasis on cost effective diagnostic approaches.
Miller continued, “What that does is give us more time in the third and fourth years to do a couple of things … the first is to allow (students) to delve more deeply into areas they are most interested in so they have two elective years instead of one.”
In addition, she said, “We already have started to implement a new content area, which is really taking a systems ap-proach to care.”
Students look at healthcare from the macro level – with a focus on population health, healthcare economics, the Afford-able Care Act and other policy impacting care delivery – down to the micro level of how to manage patients and populations within the practice setting with a lot of
thought given to transitions of care. Additionally, research projects have
been given more emphasis. Where stu-dents previously embarked on an eight-week project, all are now required to complete at least a three-month research project, with some students undertaking a six-month project.
While advanced clinical competencies are still central to a Vanderbilt medical education, Miller said the focus has broad-ened to the delivery of collaborative, high quality, highly efficient care.
“Especially for our students, who we hope will be leaders, it’s very, very impor-tant for them to have an idea of how the system works,” Miller said.
Equally important is for the students to understand how they, themselves, learn and progress. Portfolio coaches keep up with scores, tests, clinical evaluation forms, and other measures to graphically show a student’s growth over time. Miller said these coaches help students individually identify strengths, weaknesses and the best ways to learn.
“We hope this is something they’ll carry with them … being reflective practi-tioners, self aware, and always striving for improvement,” Miller concluded.
Implementing Innovation, continued from page 1
n a s h v i l l e m e d i c a l n e w s . c o m JULY 2015 > 7
By MELANIE KILGORE-HILL
As personalized medicine reshapes healthcare, genetic counselors have be-come instrumental partners to providers.
Susan Caro, MSN, director of Fam-ily Cancer Risk Services for Saint Thomas Health, is a nurse practi-tioner credentialed as an advanced practice nurse in genetics, and provides cancer risk assessment and counsel about he-reditary susceptibility to cancer and genetic test-ing. Caro said cancer risk counseling has come a long way since taking family risk assess-ments in the early 1990s.
“The object then was to try and se-lect women at high risk of breast cancer and watch them carefully,” said Caro. After BRCA testing became available in 1994, Caro said patients were terrified of discrimination based on preexisting con-ditions. Fast-forward to 2015, and we’ve come a long way from pricey single gene tests to extensive panel tests for 20-40 genes.
“For the first decade it was, ‘Who do we test?’ and then, ‘What do we do with it?’” Caro said.
Milestones in Genetic TestingUniversal acceptance of genetic test-
ing has been a huge leap for the medical community in recent years. A 2013 Su-preme Court ruling prohibiting the patent of BRCA1 and 2 testing marked a mile-stone that’s allowed for more affordable testing options.
Caro said the development of panel tests through next generation sequencing also have allowed for a massive reduction in testing costs. But despite their success, large panel tests aren’t without their limi-tations.
“One of most important things we tell patients is that this changes every day,” Caro said of panel testing. “The informa-tion we share today wasn’t even available five years ago so oftentimes we don’t have enough information to know if there’s been a mutation. The most important thing I share is that this will change with time. If we don’t answer questions now, we need to keep asking and revisit every year or two.”
That’s because many genetic vari-ances are still of unknown significance, meaning providers lack the evidence to know if a genetic change affects the func-tion of the gene. Caro also warns that the absence of a mutation might actually be a technological oversight, as new genes are added to the panels and technological advances improve detection of mutations.
Rules of Genetic CounselingAs genetic testing becomes more
prevalent, Caro said lab selection is criti-cal.
“The choice of lab really makes a dif-ference, as one lab a might go deeper into the intron, or another lab might have seen a genetic variation so often that they char-acterize it as nothing,” Caro said.
Add to that concern the growing availability of do-it-yourself genetic tests once available only through providers. Recently, Silicon Valley-based Color Ge-nomics launched their website offering saliva test kits for $249 – one-tenth the price of many tests now on the market. Results include an analysis of BRCA1 and BRCA2, plus 17 other cancer-risk genes. While controversial, the tests are becom-ing mainstream thanks in part to the Su-preme Court’s 2013 BRCA ruling.
More choices for patients and pro-viders means genetic counselors are work-ing overtime to educate all audiences on the importance of counseling. Caro said physicians should strongly urge patients to first meet with a genetic counselor to avoid being blindsided, disappointed or surprised by results.
“Primary care providers are being marketed to directly by labs, saying that this is an appropriate test,” Caro said. “That’s great as long as someone’s talk-ing to the patients about it beforehand. It becomes a clinical and emotional emer-gency for counselors when someone in the community gets test results back without having had appropriate discussions in ad-vance.”
Pre-testing conversations typically take two hours and include family history and high-level genetic education. Some-times conversations result in a delay, while other patients opt to not test.
Which begs the question … Who should be tested? Experienced counselors like Caro, who have often caught the un-expected in panels, have a very low testing threshold.
“Sometimes we might find something that gives us the opportunity to prevent cancers in relatives,” she said. “We get excited about finding something because it helps us answer a question or make a difference for someone who’s at risk. More information means more choices, and a lot of patients are willing to take that risk.”
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Genetic Counseling Crucial as Personalized Medicine Evolves
Susan Caro
Fee IncreaseEffective July 1, the
Tennessee Department of Health’s Office of Vital Records is increasing fees charged for providing birth and death certificates. Going forward, each type of certificate will cost $15 per copy for both first and additional copies.
8 > JULY 2015 n a s h v i l l e m e d i c a l n e w s . c o m
trials that we have available, especially as it relates to early-phase options.”
According to Bauer, Sarah Cannon enrolls more than 1,000 patients in early-phase clinical trials annually and has con-ducted more than 170 first-in-man clinical trials to date, including several key trials focused on matching tailored treatments to patients’ tumor profiles. Bauer said person-alized medicine is steering treatment away from the “therapy by cancer type” model of yesterday and toward treatment deter-mined by each patient’s genetic mutation or alteration.
“Enrolling patients in clinical trials is important in determining how these muta-tions affect cancers,” he said. To that end, SCRI is offering genetic “basket type” stud-ies in personalized medicine – including the Genentech MyPathway Program and the Novartis Signature Program across the Sarah Cannon Cancer Network – that are expected to last six months to one year.
“Today we are discussing with our patients how technology allows us to look at DNA in their tumor cells, which didn’t exist five years ago,” Bauer said. “The ex-plosion of technology continues to pick up speed and provides us with valuable infor-mation to offer more personalized treat-ment options to our patients.”
Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer CenterVanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center
Oncologist Jordan Berlin, MD, directs VICC’s Phase 1 clinical trials program and is co-leader of the GI Cancer program. He said personalized medi-cine also is changing the way patients are selected for trials.
“We used to take random patients and put them on Phase 1 trials … but now with personal-ized medicine we can know, at the earliest point, those who theoretically have the best chance of response based on lab data,” Ber-lin said. “Since we have potential signals, we don’t just go to Phase 2 now but can expand the trial to allow a higher chance of response based on lab data. We do tri-als that target something specific about a person’s tumor that may give them a better chance of benefitting from treatment.”
Berlin said GI cancers have tradition-ally lagged in personalized medicine stud-ies, but he believes the ability to identify protein inhibitors in certain cancers will result in more effective treatments. He’s already seen success in treating GI stromal tumors with targeted therapies and urges physicians to consult an oncologist before deeming a patient’s cancer untreatable.
“We’re getting there one piece at a
time,” Berlin said. “We may only find a targeted therapy that works for four to six percent of patients with a single cancer, but as we start adding groups, we start getting larger and larger numbers of patients doing much, much better.”
Personalized Medicine & Cardiac Care
While oncology has long been a focus of personalized medicine, Vanderbilt’s Per-sonalized Medicine department is looking beyond cancer to assess risk of other dis-eases.
Cardiologist Dan Roden, MD, as-sistant vice-chancellor for Personalized Medicine, regularly sees patients with genetic heart disease. Now, researchers in Vanderbilt’s Roden Laboratory are investigat-ing mechanisms underly-ing variability in response to drug therapy, with a particular focus on thera-pies used to treat cardiac arrhythmias. One set of studies is analyzing common genetic variances between those with and without AFib.
“The biology we’re discovering is in-credibly exciting and is in a place in the genome no one would ever think to look,” Roden said. One gene important in AFib, for example, controls early cardiac devel-opment. As the heart starts to develop, the gene in question turns off the pacemaker on the left side. That gene could lead to new biomarkers and clearer indications for use of common drugs like warfarin.
“The benefit is that eventually we’ll get to a point where we’ll have enough knowledge of genetic variance,” Roden said. “By understanding disease, we’ll be a in a much better place to develop new therapies.”
In fact, fall 2015 will usher in a new class of drugs for the treatment of high cholesterol – a drug class resulting directly from the Human Genome Project. PCSK9 inhibitors prevent the protein PCSK9 from interfering with the liver LDL removal process, allowing more LDL cholesterol removal from the blood.
“PCSK9 inhibitors are the fruits of a genetic revolution, and we’re just starting to see it,” Roden said.
DiaTech OncologyAn increasingly visible player in
the personalized medicine field is Cor-rectChemo by DiaTech Oncology. Since launching commercial operations in 2014, the Franklin-based company has run sev-eral thousand tests matching patients’ tumor samples with the best possible chemotherapy options, delivering results within 72 hours.
“Research is validating that a ‘one size fits all’ approach to cancer treatment is no longer valid,” said DiaTech Marketing Director and healthcare veteran Amanda Cecconi.
DiaTech’s novel approach is gaining acceptance by the medical community and research continues with The Mayo Clinic and other prestigious institutions. The
personalized model also offers potential efficien-cies to at-risk organiza-tions wading through the transition to value-based care.
“Value-based care is driving the industry to find new ways to better man-age the cost of cancer,” Cecconi said. “Chemo is usually the No. 1 expense in cancer treatment delivery. Patients don’t want more chemo, they want chemo that works for them.”
InSight GeneticsAnother game changer in Nashville’s
personalized medicine industry is Insight Genetics, a molecular diagnostics company working to further precision cancer care at times of diagnosis, treatment and therapeu-tic resistance. A key focus for the company is triple negative breast cancer, which CEO
Eric Dahlhauser calls the last frontier in breast cancer.
“Triple negative breast cancer has a very bad prognosis and is a class that’s often de-fined by what you are not,” Dahlhauser said, noting the many sub-types of cancer possible within a single diagnosis. “There’s a great unmet need here as no targeted therapies exist.”
Formed in 2007, Insight Genetics also focuses on ALK mutations, common in lung and other cancers. “Providers are now driving therapy decisions based on muta-tions, which is also true for assays in triple negative breast cancer,” he said. “We’re moving away from organ indication and toward an era of understanding the genetic driver behind a cancer and knowing which drugs should work best for each patient.”
By MELANIE KILGORE-HILL
On May 29, Nashville oncologists and researchers headed to Chicago for the annual American Soci-ety of Clinical Oncology conference. Among those in attendance was Todd Bauer, MD, associate director of Drug Devel-opment and principal investigator at Sarah Cannon Research In-stitute. Bauer said there were very clear take-home messages from the meeting.
“Immuno-oncology, or using medi-cine that enhances the system’s ability to control cancer, is going to continue to be a very exciting area in oncology,” Bauer said. “It’s very well tolerated and shows a significant benefit for long lasting re-sponses.”
Targeted therapies, which consider specific mutations and genetics, also played an important role in the meeting. “We’re trying to better match therapies to patients based on specific tumor DNA,” he said.
NCI-MATCH ProgramAnother focal point was the NIH’s
NCI-Molecular Analysis for Therapy Choice (NCI-MATCH), a clinical trial that will analyze patients’ tumors to deter-mine whether they contain genetic abnor-malities for which a targeted drug exists (“actionable mutations”) and assign treat-ment based on the abnormality.
NCI-MATCH seeks to determine whether treating cancers according to their molecular abnormalities will show
evidence of effectiveness. NCI-MATCH could add or drop treatments over time, and each treatment will be used in a unique arm of the trial.
The trial opens for enrollment this month with 10 arms. Each arm will en-roll adults 18 years of age and older with advanced solid tumors and lymphomas that are no longer responding (or never responded) to standard therapy and have begun to grow.
SMART Precision Cancer Medicine
The meeting also served as an outlet for Vanderbilt University Medical Center to present a mobile computer application under development called SMART Pre-cision Cancer Medicine (PCM), featured in a demonstration of improved cancer care coordination through clinical data interoperability and electronic clinical in-formation sharing.
SMART (Substitutable Medical Apps and Reusable Technology) is a computing platform designed to allow apps to work with all manner of medical record systems. SMART PCM runs on smartphones and tablet computers and is intended one day to help cancer patients and their doctors understand and act on genetic test results. It communicates with medical records sys-tems using a new interoperability language called FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoper-ability Resources).
The demonstration highlighted the advantages of data interoperability by fol-lowing a hypothetical colon cancer patient through risk assessment in the clinic, ge-nomic testing, surgery, chemotherapy ad-ministration and home care.
Breaking Through: Personalized Medicine Innovation Abounds, continued from page 1
Dr. Todd Bauer
Dr. Jordan Berlin
Dr. Dan Roden
ASCO Conference Showcases Latest in Oncology Treatment
Amanda Cecconi
Online Bonus: NIH Director Francis Collins, MD, PhD, recently addressed the next steps in precision medicine with a Nashville audience. Go to NashvilleMedicalNews.com
Eric Dalhauser
n a s h v i l l e m e d i c a l n e w s . c o m JULY 2015 > 9
By MELANIE KILGORE-HILL
In the quickly evolving world of value-based healthcare, one company is taking cost transparency to the next level. Meet MDsave, a web-based company offering self-pay patients and those with high deductible insurance plans an online resource to compare and save on health-care-related expenses.
It’s the brainchild of Clyde Spencer and Paul Ketchel, industry veteran and former healthcare lobbyist. “I read one of the first Affordable Care Act drafts and saw the additional pay requirements and knew it would cause premiums to increase to cover costs,” Ketchel said of the compa-ny’s inception. “As premiums increased, we believed a majority of employers would move to a high deductible health plan op-tion, and that for the first time Americans would become concerned with costs as they’d have to pay a substantial amount out-of-pocket before benefits kicked in.”
Ketchel then approached former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, MD, with the idea to utilize e-commerce to bundle otherwise pricey services. Today, MDsave includes a patented process that bundles services, segments payments and offer consumers one easy-to-understand price – all with a 100 percent money back guarantee.
How MDsave WorksIn a nutshell, healthcare providers
post medical services with the total price they charge directly on the website. Pa-tients enter the name of the procedure and their zip code and can then easily search, compare and purchase those services with
complete privacy. After a purchase is made, the customer is provided a medical voucher for the service, and the physician’s appointment desk is notified. Today, the website offers nearly 7,000 services in 100 markets across 22 states. Headquartered in Brentwood, MDsave also operates a San Francisco office for its engineering and web development team.
Benefit to Providers“Physicians reap the biggest benefit
because a lot of patients can’t afford ser-vice, and they want to help their patients,” said Ketchel, who serves as the company’s CEO. “Now they can give patients a rate they can afford and a better one than they can find on their own.”
Case in point: A patient walks in to
his orthopaedist with a knee problem and learns an MRI will cost $2,500 out-of-pocket so he doesn’t get it, Ketchel explained. Not only does the hospital lose the MRI, the patient doesn’t get di-agnosed. “We’re helping patients get an early level of care leading to faster surgical treatment,” he said.
On average, patients save 40-60 per-cent and providers generally net 10-15 percent more than with traditional reim-bursement. Prepaid services mean patients have no bad debt, offices see zero claims processing, and providers are paid in six days or less. “What’s happening is that we’re wringing 30-40 percent of waste out of the system because of increased ef-ficiency,” Ketchel said.
Shopping AroundTypically, MDsave sales are over
$500 each and include services ranging from a few hundred dollars to those top-ping $20-30,000 like bariatric surgery. GI scopes, orthopaedic implants, advanced imaging and even cardiac cath procedures are all available with additional services and markets being regularly added.
“The healthcare community underes-timated the ability of the patient to shop around,” Ketchel said. “That may have been true three or four years ago, but today when they (patients) call us, they’re extremely educated. They’ve already seen a doctor; they know exactly what they need; and they’re looking to find the best rate.”
Ketchel said many consumers pur-chase from providers they would have gone to anyway. “A service could be $5,000 here or $15,000 somewhere else
so we’re giving them access to care with plans they just don’t have,” he said.
In fact, more than 70 percent of MD-save patients have insurance and still file, making their deductible dollars go further. Ketchel said insurance companies also like the model as it helps patients get the care they need sooner, preventing more com-plicated diagnoses and pricy ER visits down the line. Patient satisfaction is near 100 percent, and two-thirds of patients are referred to the site by their doctors.
For providers, the cost to partici-pate depends on the size of the hospital or ambulatory center and can range from $5,000 to $12,000 per month. “Many hos-pitals have never had to think of patients this way before,” Ketchel said of the com-petitive, retail-driven model. “We help them know what to charge in their mar-ket and create bundles, while our Internet team in San Francisco says, ‘here’s what consumers are looking for and how to at-tract them.’”
Gaining SupportIn May 2015, MDsave announced its
first institutional investment of $12 million from New York-based MTS Health Inves-tors. The board, which includes Sen. Bill Frist and [recently added] MTS partner Oliver Moses, raised a total of $14.1 mil-lion in this round of financing.
“It’s truly a win/win for patients and providers,” Moses said in a company-issued release. “The MDsave team’s extensive healthcare knowledge and Sili-con Valley technology innovation gives providers a platform to drive down costs, increase patient volume and pass savings on to patients.”
MDsave’s E-commerce Model Takes Healthcare in a New Direction
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Joining Forces post King v. Burwell
On June 29, U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN), Saint Thomas Health President & COO Karen Springer, Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, and a bipartisan group of elected officials, business leaders and activists joined a roundtable discussion on the future of healthcare in Tennessee.
The group called for a renewed push to pass Insure Tennessee, Gov. Bill Haslam’s plan to expand insurance coverage that has twice met defeat in the State Legislature.
“Insure Tennessee makes sense for our economy and even more sense for our people,” Mayor Dean said. “Our uninsured citizens need it; our economy needs it; and our sense of humanity demands it.”
Springer added, “It is our mission to care for the widow, the orphan, the forgotten, and the neglected. To that end, it is imperative that we continue to fight for this cause.”
10 > JULY 2015 n a s h v i l l e m e d i c a l n e w s . c o m
President Chris FerrellChief Financial Officer Ed Tearman
Executive Vice President Of Digital And Support Services Blair Johnson
Director Of Financial Planning And Analysis Carla Simon
Vice President Of Human Resources Ed WoodVice President of Content Patrick Rains
Vice President Of Production Operations Curt Pordes
Group Publisher Eric NorwoodChief Revenue Officer Dave Carter
Director Of Digital Sales & Marketing David WalkerController Todd Patton
Creative Director Heather Pierce
Bacon Joins CapStarIndustry vet Buddy Bacon has joined
CapStar as senior vice president of the bank’s healthcare group. He will team with CapStar EVP Mark Mattson to build the company’s industry presence after two of the bank’s healthcare leaders defected to the competi-tion earlier this year.
Bacon was most recently CEO of MediTract. Before that, he led Meridian Surgical Partners, Xtensia and Medifax-EDI. Bacon began his career as a certi-fied public accountant with LBMC.
Carter Joins KraftCPAsLongtime healthcare accountant
Lucy R. Carter, CPA, has joined KraftCPAs PLLC as a member, effective July 1. The former co-founder of Carter Lankford CPAs made the move as partner Sara Lankford, CPA, an-nounced her retirement at the end of June.
Carter will practice in Kraft’s entrepreneurial services group and as a member of the firm’s healthcare industry team. All of the Carter Lankford employees will join KraftCPAs, bringing the firm’s total num-ber of employees to approximately 180.
According to Vic Alexander, chief manager of KraftCPAs, “We have known Lucy and Sara for years and admired their firm. Their experience and reputa-tion, particularly in the healthcare niche, are outstanding, and we’re fortunate to have Lucy and her team join our firm. We anticipate a lot of synergy between them and our affiliate Kraft Healthcare Con-sulting.”
Let’s Give Them Something to Talk About!Awards, Honors, Achievements
Four alert health professionals each recently recognized something was wrong when screening four differ-ent mothers in the Baby and Me To-bacco Free program. In each situation,
the women had troublesome levels of carbon monoxide in their systems that were noticed during a breathing evalua-tion. Home inspections were conducted, in which heating system gas leaks were identified and repaired, and the four mothers and their families were pro-tected from harm. All four professionals have been presented the Tennessee De-partment of Health’s Commissioner’s Achievement Award. The recipients in-clude Kelly Hooks, RN, Putnam County Health Department; Andrea Sansone, The Edge Women’s Care Center, Dayton; Kelly Soliman, RD, Cheatham County Health Department; and Katie Winter-burn, MS, RDN, LDN, Lawrence County Health Department.
Ted Anderson, MD, PhD, professor of Obstetrics and Gyne-cology at Vanderbilt Uni-versity Medical Center, has been elected treasurer of the American College of Obstetricians and Gyne-cologists (ACOG).
Murfreesboro den-tist William R. “Roy” Thompson, DDS, MAGD recently received the Jack Wells Memorial Dedication to Dentistry Award during the Tennessee Dental Associa-tion’s 148th annual session in Nashville. The award, which isn’t presented every year, is given to truly de-serving recipients who em-body four criteria set forth by the TDA: quality of practice, service to organized dentistry, contribution to den-tal education, and humanitarian service.
Lovell Communications recently accepted 10 Healthcare Advertising Awards from the Healthcare Marketing Report. The Nashville agency received highest honors in the social media cat-egory with Gold Awards for innovative campaigns on both Facebook and Pinter-est. Lovell also received Bronze Awards in the newspaper advertising and calen-dar categories, along with Merit Awards in the brochure, newspaper advertising, outdoor transit/billboard, and logo/let-
terhead categories.Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe
has appointed David L. Miller, president and chief operating officer of Community Health Sys-tems, Inc., to the Board of Visitors of the Virginia Mili-tary Institute in Lexington, Virginia.
The American Adver-tising Federation Nash-ville recognized BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee as the Multicultural Adver-tiser of the Year for its extensive efforts to support diversity and inclusion through its campaign to Hispanic audiences.
Arthur Dalley, PhD, professor of Cell and Developmental Biology at Vanderbilt, recently re-ceived the highest award for human anatomy edu-cation in the anatomical sciences during the 2015 Experimental Biology meeting in Boston. He ac-cepted the Henry Gray/Elsevier Distinguished Educator Award Medal for 2015 and was also named a Fellow of the American As-sociation of Anatomists.
Based on a review of Medicare STARS 2014 quality data, Dickson Medi-cal Associates has been recognized and rewarded by BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee’s Medicare Advantage Qual-ity Incentive Program as being among an elite group of top physician practices statewide serving plan members with outstanding supportive treatment and appropriate preventive care.
Amber Sims, vice president of Saint Thomas Health Alliance, was hon-ored in Washington, D.C. on June 6 as one of “To-morrow’s Leaders” at the 2015 Catholic Health As-sembly.
Monroe Carell Named Among Nation’s Best
The Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt has again been named among the nation’s leaders in pe-diatric healthcare in U.S. News & World Report’s annual “Best Children’s Hospi-tal” rankings released June 9. The hospi-tal achieved national rankings for a maxi-mum of 10 out of 10 pediatric specialty programs, with half of those specialties among the top 20 in the country, includ-ing the hospital’s urology program, which maintained its rank in the No. 6 spot.
Five other pediatric specialties moved up in the rankings. Neurology & Neurosurgery improved from No. 42 to No. 15; Neonatology jumped from No. 45 to No. 27; Gastroenterology & GI Sur-gery moved from No. 40 to No. 32; and Diabetes & Endocrinology rose from No. 31 to No. 25. Other specialties ranked this year: Orthopaedics (12), Cancer (30), Cardiology & Heart Surgery (20), and Ne-phrology (42).
GrandRounds
(L-R): David Morgan, Jeff Drummonds & Mike Cain.
Drummonds Takes the Helm at LBMCJeff Drummonds has been named managing partner of LBMC. He succeeds
Mike Cain and David Morgan, two of the founders and longtime co-managing part-ners of Lattimore, Black, Morgan & Cain.
Drummonds, who has been with the large regional account-ing and business consulting firm for 14 years, most recently led the firm’s tax services group and has nearly 30 years experience. Launched in 1984, LBMC now has nearly 450 employees and is one of Accounting Today’s “Top 50 Firms” in the nation with $74 million in revenue for 2014. In ad-dition to accounting services, the LBMC Family of Companies includes and array of consulting expertise including marketing, technology, security, staffing, and in-vestment advisory. Cain and Morgan will stay involved in the firm to lend “strategic oversight.”
Buddy Bacon
Lucy R. Carter
Amber Sims
David L. Miller
Dr. Arthur Dalley
Dr. Roy Thompson
Dr. Ted Anderson
n a s h v i l l e m e d i c a l n e w s . c o m JULY 2015 > 11
Certifications & Accreditations
Vanderbilt University Medical Center, in conjunction with Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, has been re-accredited by the CEO Roundtable on Cancer as a CEO Cancer Gold Standard employer for 2015 in recognition of out-standing employee health initiatives to address and discourage tobacco use, promote physical activity, provide op-tions for a healthy diet, detect cancer at an early stage and offer access to qual-ity care.
The Southern Association of Col-leges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) Board of Trust-ees approved the accreditation of the University of Tennessee Health Sci-ence Center (UTHSC) as a separate university, UTHSC Chancellor Steve J. Schwab announced last month. Several years ago, in examining the governance structure, resources available, annual budget, geographic location, and rela-tive autonomy from UT-Knoxville, SAC-SCOC leadership determined UTHSC should be a separately accredited in-stitution within the UT System. “We remain an integral component of the UT System of universities overseen by President DiPietro and governed by the Board of Trustees of the University of Tennessee,” Chancellor Schwab noted.
symplr Acquires CBR Associates
symplr™, a leading provider of SaaS healthcare compliance and cre-dentialing solutions recently announced the acquisition of CBR Associates Inc. of Durham, NC. This marks the company’s third acquisition in less than two years.
Patrick Birmingham, vice president and general manager of Provider Man-agement at symplr, which is headquar-tered in Houston and also maintains corporate offices in Franklin, Tenn. fol-lowing an earlier merger with Medkinet-ics and Payor Enrollment Services, said, “By bringing CBR Associates into our fold, we’re able to offer an expanded solution to our combined customer base. CBR solutions have a 34-year track record of success at hundreds of healthcare facilities across the nation, and we’re very pleased to have such a talented team join us.”
Hanto Named Director of Vanderbilt Transplant Center
Douglas Hanto, MD, PhD, has been named director of the Vanderbilt Trans-plant Center effective July 1 when he suc-ceeds Seth Karp, MD. Hanto is only the center’s fourth director since its founding in 1989.
Hanto joined VUMC in 2014 as the center’s associate director and has
worked with the departments of pediat-rics and surgery to establish a pediatric liver center at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital. In his new role, he will oversee administrative and clinical aspects of adult and pediatric kidney, liver, heart, lung and pancreas transplantation.
Previously, he was professor of Sur-gery and associate dean for CME at Washington University School of Medi-cine in St. Louis, where he also helped start a liver transplant program. He has also served as chief of the Division of Transplantation at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and as a profes-sor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School.
Vanderbilt Announces New Leadership For Adult Hospital, Population Health
Vanderbilt University Hospital has promoted Mitchell Edgeworth to CEO of Vanderbilt University Adult Hospital and Clinics.
Edgeworth was previ-ously COO for the Vander-bilt University Hospital and Clinics. He will succeed Da-vid Posch, who as served as CEO of the adult hos-pital and clinics since 2011. Posch has been named to the newly created position of associate vice chancellor for Population Health.
Edgeworth joined VUMC in 2012 as COO of Vanderbilt University Hospital. In his new role, he will focus on all aspects of operational performance and will work closely with the system’s clinical depart-ment chairs and operational leaders.
Edgeworth and Posch’s roles are ef-fective immediately. Posch, who joined VUMC in 1999 as COO of the Vanderbilt Medical Group, will be responsible for ensuring the strategic direction of popu-lation health for VUMC and VHAN.
NuScriptRX Adds Chief Pharmacy Officer
Nashville-based NuScriptRX™ re-cently announced the addition of Jimmy L. Tucker as chief pharmacy officer, a new role for the company. Tucker has more than 20 years experience in long-term care pharmacy management. In his new role, he is responsible for all of pharmacy operations, long-term care client implementation, pro-fessional and regulatory affairs, and strate-gic business development.
Previously, Tucker served as president of Pharmacy for Vanguard Healthcare. He is a graduate of the University of Louisiana at Monroe College of Pharmacy.
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Our immune systems are able to recognize cancer cells in several different ways. By the primary mechanism, tumor cells display proteins on their surface that are not displayed on normal cells. These proteins are called tumor-specific antigens, and they mark tumor cells as diseased or abnormal. This allows our immune system to recognize and kill them. However, tumor cells eventually develop ways to evade and suppress the immune system. This ultimately leads to progression of the cancer and resistance to treatment.
Efforts have therefore been made to prevent the suppressive effect that cancer has on the immune system. Recently, a class of medications called the “checkpoint inhibitors” has been developed. These medications work by blocking the signals that cancer cells use to turn off the immune system. Presently, several checkpoint inhibitors are FDA approved for melanoma and lung cancer. Checkpoint inhibitors are also showing promise in ovarian cancer, bladder cancer and Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.
The field of cancer immunotherapy is exciting and rapidly evolving. All immunotherapies that are currently FDA approved are available through Tennessee Oncology. Additionally, by way of the partnership between Tennessee Oncology and Sarah Cannon Research Institute, many of the immunotherapies under development are available through clinical trials.
Promising Immunotherapy For Cancer PatientsTENNESSEE ONCOLOGY’S William Donnellan, M.D.
