A Conversation with Jennie Chin Hansen, MS, RN, FAAN

Jennie Chin Hansen is CEO of the American Geriatrics Society, the nation’s leading membership organization of geriatrics healthcare professionals whose shared mission is to improve the health, independence and quality of life of older people. Prior to this she served for two years as president of AARP. In 2005, Hansen had spent nearly 25 years with On Lok Inc., a nonprofit family of organizations providing integrated, globally financed and comprehensive primary, acute and long-term care community-based services in San Francisco. The On Lok prototype became the Program of All-Inclusive Care to the Elderly (PACE) program, which was signed into federal legislation in 1997 making this Medicare/Medicaid program available in all 50 states.

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A Conversation with Albert G. Mulley, Jr., MD, MPP

Dr. Al Mulley is the director of the Dartmouth Center for Healthcare Delivery Science. Before assuming that position in November 2010, he was the founding Chief of the General Medicine Division and Director of the Medical Practices Evaluation Center at Massachusetts General Hospital and Associate Professor of Medicine and Associate Professor of Health Policy at Harvard Medical School. He graduated from Dartmouth College and was awarded a doctorate in medicine and a master’s in public policy from Harvard before training in internal medicine at Mass General.

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Jim Conway is an adjunct lecturer at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, principal of the Governance and Leadership Group of Pascal Metrics in Washington, D.C., and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) in Cambridge, Mass. He was Senior President of IHI from 2006 to 2009 and  Senior Fellow from 2005 to 2006. From 1995 to 2005, Jim was Executive Vice President and CEO of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. Prior to joining DFCI, he was at Children’s Hospital, in Boston, for 27 years in radiology, administration and finance and as assistant hospital director. His areas of expertise and interest include governance and executive leadership, patient safety, change management, and patient- and family-centered care. He holds a Master of

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Click here to read the conversation with Jerod Loeb, PhD.

Dr. Gold, Chairman Emeritus of the board and co-founder in 1988 with his wife, Sandra O. Gold, of the Arnold P. Gold Foundation, was honored for his lifelong dedication to the advancement of patient-centered care by preserving the tradition of the caring physician and emphasizing the crucial need for humanism in medicine. The mission of the Gold Foundation is to preserve the tradition of the caring doctor and advance humanism in medicine through physician education. Students at more than 94 percent of the schools of medicine and osteopathy in the United States participate in one or more of the foundation’s nearly two dozen programs.

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A Conversation with Mary Jane Koren, MD, MPH

 Mary Jane Koren, M.D., M.P.H., a geriatrician, is vice president for the Commonwealth Fund’s Long-Term Care Quality Improvement Program. Prior to coming to the fund she held faculty appointments at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine and later served as the director of the Bureau of Long- Term Care Services, New York’s state nursing home survey agency. Since coming to the fund in 2002, Dr. Koren has given invited testimony to congressional committees, serves on numerous advisory committees and expert panels for CMS and other federal agencies and chairs the national steering committee for the Advancing Excellence in America’s Nursing Homes Campaign. In 2010 she was the recipient of the Terrence Keenan Leadership Award in Health Philanthropy from Grantmakers in Health.

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A Conversation with Dale Shaller, MPA

Dale Shaller is the principal of Shaller Consulting Group, a health policy analysis and management consulting practice based in Stillwater, Minn. He has devoted nearly three decades to the design, implementation and evaluation of healthcare quality measurement and improvement programs, with a special focus on listening to the voice of the patient and promoting methods for engaging consumers in managing their health and healthcare. His work on measuring and improving the experience of patients and families has been based in the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS®) program funded by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. He has served as a member of the Harvard and Yale CAHPS research teams for 10 years, working on patient experience survey design, measurement and reporting issues. He has directed the National CAHPS Benchmarking Database since its inception in 1998 and is a co-author of The CAHPS Improvement Guide and other articles related to strategies for improving the patient experience.

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A Conversation with Bill Thomas, MD

Dr. Bill Thomas is an international authority on geriatric medicine and eldercare. A graduate of Harvard Medical School (1986) he went on to graduate medical training in the Highland Hospital/University of Rochester Family Medicine Residency. While he was planning on a career in emergency medicine, a part-time position as the medical director of a small rural nursing home turned into a full-time and lifelong passion for improving the well-being of older people. In the early 1990s, Dr. Thomas and his wife, Dr. Judith Meyers-Thomas, developed the Eden Alternative, which posited a radical critique of the status quo in long-term care and offered a creative way to “change the culture” of nursing homes by bringing life and laughter into the lives of elders.  The philosophy also called for fundamental changes in the relationship between staff and management. His book on the initial implementation project, The Eden  Alternative: Nature, Hope and Nursing Homes, was published by the University of Missouri Press in 1994.

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‘To Touch the Dying,’ written by Thalia Margalit, MD

To most who entered the room, she was already a corpse, as her only signs of life were read by machines. When spoken to, she did not answer. When touched, she did not respond. She lay in bed, arms limply at her sides, as her lungs were inflated and deflated for her. She showed no signs of pain or discomfort, no signs of awareness, and no signs of hope for recovery. It was clear that she would die imminently. Their job at this stage was unfortunately done. The treatment plan was to administer the appropriate doses of morphine and brace for a swift death.

Click here to read ‘To Touch the Dying,’ by Thalia Margalit.

 

A Tribute to Pat Sodomka
From Jim Conway, MS, FACHE

Pat Sodomka, F.A.C.H.E,. an internationally recognized advocate for patient- and family-centered care, died Feb. 19, 2010. She was 60 years old. “I don’t remember exactly when I first met Pat Sodomka—possibly 1997—but I remember without question the impact of the meeting on me as if it were yesterday. Pat’s warmth and gentleness created a strong presence. As she spoke, she exuded a firm resolve to deliver innovative models of adult patient- and family-centered care (PFCC) and educational program for health professionals in training. In that first meeting she demonstrated both the vision to achieve that aim and an unwavering resolve that this would be, at its heart, the work of patients and family members and those clinicians partnering with them on the front line.” Jim Conway, MS, FACHE, IHI Senior Fellow.

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A Conversation with David Leach, MD

David C. Leach, M.D. (left), is the retired CEO of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME). Born in Elmira, N.Y., he received a B.A. from the University of Toronto in 1965, and an M.D. from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry in 1969. He completed residency training in internal medicine and endocrinology at the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, Mich., and is certified in those disciplines. He also had additional training in pediatric endocrinology. Dr. Leach received the “Good Samaritan Award” from Gov. John Engler for his more than 25 years of work at a free clinic in Detroit. He received grant support for innovative curricula for both medical students and residents from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trust. He is interested in “chaordic” organizations, the teaching of improvement skills, aligning accreditation with emerging healthcare practices and the use of educational outcome measures as an accreditation tool.

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A Conversation with Gerard van Grinsven, CEO, Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital.

Gerard van Grinsven (left) joined Henry Ford Health System in June2006 as the president and chief executive officer of Henry Ford West Bloomfield (Michigan) Hospital. The $360-million, 300-bed hospital, the newest in the system, is attached to the Henry Ford Medical Center-West Bloomfield. The hospital opened with 191 beds in March 2009, with the additional 109 beds coming in 2011.

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