Niran S. Al-Agba, MD is a third-generation primary care physician practicing for 20 years in her hometown. She began working in her father’s medical office on Saturdays when she was 9 and has done every job in a medical office that there is including receptionist, medical assistant, janitor, and all the way to physician owner. After graduating from Michigan State University with a BS in Lyman Briggs Physiology and History of Health and Humanities, she attended University of Washington School of Medicine, graduating in 1999. She completed internship and residency at Denver Childrens Hospital/University of Colorado SOM and returned home to work in her father’s practice in 2001 for a few months and then permanently in 2002.
Continue reading…The Boss: Giovanni Piedimonte, MD, FAAP, FCCP
Dr. Piedimonte has more than 25 years of experience in the leadership and management of complex healthcare systems. He is currently the Vice President for Research and Institutional Official of Tulane University, a university-wide post responsible for overseeing all aspects of research across the institution. He also holds the academic appointment of Professor with Tenure in the Departments of Pediatrics, Biochemistry & Molecular Biology of Tulane School of Medicine. Previously, he held the Steven and Nancy Calabrese Endowed Chair for Excellence in Pediatric Care, Research and Education, and served in multiple leadership roles at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Cleveland, Ohio, including Institute Chair of the Pediatric Institute, Physician-in-Chief of the Children’s Hospital, President of the Children’s Hospital for Rehabilitation, Professor & Chair of Pediatrics at the Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University, Chief of Global Pediatric Research Operations, and Director of the Center for Pediatric Research. Before that, he served for more than 6 years as the first Wyeth Research Scholar, Professor and Chairman of the Department of Pediatrics at West Virginia University School of Medicine, and Physician-in-Chief of the WVU Children’s Hospital in Morgantown, WV.
Continue reading…The Big Picture Leader: Ginger Renkiewicz, RN, BSN, MSBA
Ginger Renkiewicz is the Executive Vice President, Hospital Operations and Chief Operating Officer for UnityPoint Health-Trinity which consists of four full-service hospitals in Illinois and Iowa. She is an accomplished and respected organizational leader with experience in the delivery of quality patient-focused care. Able to combine industry-leading operations and nursing expertise with innovative and visionary leadership skills to deliver first-class results, she is a recognized problem solver and change agent capable of driving organizational level transformation. She is a talented communicator who is able to relay complex and highly technical information in a clear and concise manner. Her expertise encompasses Executive Leadership; Project Management; Hospital Operations; Financial Analysis; and Transformational Change.
Continue reading…The Mindful Doc: Dael Waxman, MD
Dael Waxman, M.D. is a Professor of Family Medicine at Atrium Health in Charlotte, NC. Previously Interim Chair and Vice-Chair of the Department of Family Medicine, he continues on the faculty there as well as serves as the Medical Director of Physician Well-being for Medical Education for Atrium Health and Medical Director of Patient-Centered Programming at Atrium CMC-Mercy. In addition to his medical background, he has received training in and has been integrating family therapy, clinical hypnosis, mind/body medicine, mindfulness, and leadership coaching into teaching, practice, and faculty development for over 25 years. He has taught regionally, nationally, and internationally on: physician burnout and well-being, mindfulness in medicine, developing a patient and family-centered culture, family influences on health, physician-patient communication, and collaboration between mental health and primary care.
Continue reading…The Disrupter: Leah Houston, MD
Dr. Leah Houston is the founder of HPEC, and a board-certified Emergency Physician. While practicing emergency medicine across the US for nearly 10 years she recognized a common problem: uncompensated administrative burdens related to physician employment and credentialing are a leading cause of administrative waste and physician burnout. She also realized that distributed ledger technology could solve the obstructive regulatory problems in healthcare by creating a decentralized community of physicians. So, she began working on the project and named it HPEC – the Humanitarian Physicians Empowerment Community.
HPEC is building a platform that will give every physician a self-sovereign digital identity attached to their credentials in order to create a democratic digital physicians guild. HPEC will streamline the current antiquated and laborious process of credentialing, reduce administrative waste, improve access to care and give physicians sovereign ownership of their data and employment rights. The organization will also create an opportunity for physicians to communicate more efficiently about policy, and practice in order to improve patient care.
Continue reading…The Publisher: Marlene Wüst-Smith, MD, FAAP
Dr. Marlene Wüst-Smith is the founder and publisher of Physician Outlook Magazine, a print and online magazine that hopes to change the division between the once sacred physician and patient relationship. The magazine has a dual audience: its target reader is BOTH the physician and the patient, and it effectively humanizes and simplifies issues important to patients of all ages, demographics and political persuasions. She believes in supporting those who have been traditionally underserved. The Physician Outlook Magazine recently launched a job board where it hopes to promote opportunities for physicians at healthcare organizations that still believe in patients over profits while creating confidentiality and autonomy for the physician candidate.
Continue reading…The Writer: Paul Pender, MD
Dr. Paul Pender is the author of Rebuilding Trust in Healthcare: A Doctor’s Prescription for a Post-Pandemic America. Drawing on his near 40-year career in clinical ophthalmology and his role as advisor to Vxtra Health, Dr. Pender offers an insider’s look at how trust develops between doctors and their patients. That trust has been eroded by internal and external factors, even before coronavirus, which has undermined that trust even further. His prescription for reform begins with the fundamental building block of healthcare: the patient-physician relationship. Rebuilding Trust uses a case presentation style to illustrate that by working from the bottom up, we can find solutions for better healthcare for patients, physicians and policy makers. His book is a message of hope in a time of uncertainty and will be released on September 20, 2020.
Continue reading…The Storyteller: David Armstrong, DPM, MD, PhD
Dr. David Armstrong is Professor of Surgery at the University of Southern California. He holds a Masters of Science in Tissue Repair and Wound Healing from the University of Wales College of Medicine and a PhD from the University of Manchester College of Medicine, where he was appointed Visiting Professor of Medicine. He is founder and co-Director of the Southwestern Academic Limb Salvage Alliance (SALSA) and has produced more than 520 peer-reviewed research papers in dozens of scholarly medical journals as well as over 90 books or book chapters. He is the co-Editor of the American Diabetes Association’s (ADA) Clinical Care of the Diabetic Foot, now in its third edition. Serving as the Deputy Director of Arizona’s Center for Accelerated Biomedical Innovation (ACABI), he is the co-founder of its “augmented human” initiative, which places him at the nexus of the merger of consumer electronics, wearables, and medical devices.
Continue reading…The Innovator: Tim Raderstorf, DNP, RN
Dr. Tim Raderstorf is the Chief Innovation Officer at The Ohio State University College of Nursing and The Head of Academic Entrepreneurship at the Erdős Institute. From TED talks to textbooks, Tim uses every platform he can find to empower those at the frontlines to change healthcare.
As the first nurse to hold the Chief Innovation Officer title in academia, he takes pride in educating the world on the role of the nurse as an innovator. He is the founder of the Innovation Studio, a maketspace that democratizes innovation, providing every interprofessional team that pitches their ideas with the funding, tools, and mentorship needed to turn ideas into actions. In addition to this work, Tim is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Practice in the Masters of Healthcare Innovation program at Ohio State.
Continue reading…The Joint Chief: Dr. Benjamin Schwartz, MD
Benjamin J. Schwartz, MD is a board certified orthopaedic surgeon specializing in the surgical and non-surgical treatment of arthritis of the hip and knee including total joint replacement and revision. Dr. Schwartz attended the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA where he was one of a select group of incoming freshman designated as a James Monroe Scholar. While in college, Dr. Schwartz participated in scientific research investigating genes involved in the development of the vascular system. After graduating with high honors from William and Mary, Dr. Schwartz attended the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond where he was elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha medical honor society, graduating in the top 10% of his class. Dr. Schwartz obtained his certification from the American Board of Orthopedic Surgery in 2010 and is a member of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons as well as both the American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons and International Congress of Joint Replacement, two specialty societies focused on the treatment of hip and knee problems.
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