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Greenway Health

Greenway Health

Mark Janiszewski of Greenway Health and Diana Keough of ShareWIK

Greenway Health

A couple of topics that have come up repeatedly over the course of weeks since we started the Health Connect South Radio show:  Population Health and Interoperability.  On this week’s show we sat down with health IT expert, Mark Janiszewski, EVP of Product Management for Greenway Health.

Mark shared how the company has recently introduced new solutions that are aimed at facilitating better population health management initiatives.  Recent changes in the law are placing greater requirements for focus on preventive health and patient outcomes over the older disease-focused models that reimbursed on a fee-for-service basis.

Greenway’s platform gives providers access to data that empowers them to close gaps in care delivery and better manage a population’s high-cost problems such as diabetes, heart disease, and other chronic illnesses.  Additionally, the company is providing a portal called, Greenway Exchange, that gives patients ability to see their health data, schedule appointments, and even interact with their care providers.

We talked about how the company helps their clients prepare for the coming implementation of ICD-10 coding requirements that are currently set to go into effect in October 2015.  The new coding format will add a much greater degree of detail in documenting patient problems and treatments.

The goal of the ICD-10 changes is to facilitate research, improve outcomes through better case management, decrease medical errors, enhance public health, educate patients on costs/outcomes, and more.

Mark shared some of the challenges that health organizations face in meeting the expectations for the ICD-10 documentation.  The company is helping to prepare their clients for the upcoming changes in coding.

Greenway Health has always worked to empower our customers so they can deliver high-quality care while being financially sound,” said Tee Green, CEO of Greenway Health. “Never has that been more important given the rise of pay-for-performance, healthcare consumerism and a population with an increasing number of chronic conditions that requires coordination between multiple caregivers. Greenway Community enables providers to gain actionable insight into clinical and financial performance at all levels of the care continuum like never before.”

Greenway Health has been providing health IT solutions since 1977.  Over time, the company has grown significantly, both organically and through merger.  As an enterprise, the company delivers clinical, financial, and administrative information tools providers need to practice medicine the way they want to practice.

Greenway helps providers stay ahead of the complex regulatory requirements, maximize revenue and, most importantly, focus on their patients rather than on technology.  The company accomplishes this through intuitive user interfaces, interoperability leadership to exchange clinical data and facilitate connected care, and a grass-roots service culture.

Special Guest:

Mark Janiszewski, EVP, Product Management, Greenway Health  linkedin_small1  twitter_logo_small  facebook_logo_small3

Greenway Health

  • Bachelor of Commerce, Concordia
  • UniversityGraduate Diploma, Public Accountancy, McGill University
  • Previous Director, Account Marketing, Nortel Networks
  • Former VP, Product Management, Revenue Cycle Solutions

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Elder Care

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Elder Care

This week we hosted experts whose companies address the care needs of our elderly population.  We hosted Maria de la Guardia, of Assisted Living Locators, Chris Foster, of LivHome, and Blaine Warketine, of Vimty.

Assisted Living Locators is a company that provides a free service for families in search of an assisted living facility for their loved one.  The company forms relationships with facilities around the community, getting to know them, the services they provide, costs, etc.  They then get to know the families who connect with them seeking help through an interview process to be better able to recommend a facility based on location, type of services available, living environment, cost, etc.

We talked about the fact that many online services focus mainly on a few facilities with which they have financial arrangements, leaving out many options in the area that could potentially be a better fit for a given patient.  Once they have contact information for the family it is shared with other services who then assail the family with calls and emails trying to sell them on centers they represent.  Maria shared some questions families should ask when they contact an online service that purports to be the facility they think they’re contacting.

LivHome is a company that helps seniors be able to live their lives in their own home or their family’s home with the care support and equipment needed to do so.  The company conducts an in-depth assessment of the needs of the patient(s) in need of supportive care/equipment through interviews with their nursing staff.  From there, they can make recommendations and provide the supportive care providers necessary.

Chris shared his story about having been disappointed in the experience with home care for loved ones in the past and that he wanted to provide a high-quality service for the patients who want to be able to live in their own home.  We talked about the fact that it’s actually possible to have an elderly patient live in their own or a family member’s home for less than or similar costs to an assisted living center or nursing facility.

Blaine Warketine shared some impressive statistics about how much of overall healthcare spend each year comes from providing high-acuity care in the last days of life, often for patients who didn’t actually want to have aggressive measures.  Vimty is a platform that allows patients to conduct video interviews with counselors and family members wherein they are able to state their wishes for end of life care measures, along with context for why they feel the way they do.

We talked about the fact that this record has much more weight and is much more likely to prevent much of the family drama that can occur with the typical written advanced directive document (or worse, in the cases of NO document).  Through the Vimty platform, patients have a permanent record that is part of their EMR that can be referenced when end-of-life measures become necessary.

Special Guests:

Maria de la Guardia, of Assisted Living Locators  linkedin_small1  facebook_logo_small3

Assisted Living Locators

  • MBA International Business, George Washington University
  • Professional Development in Gerontology, Kennesaw State University
  • Previous Strategy & Policy Development/Industry Analyst
  • Board of Directors, Strength of Nature

Chris Foster, of LivHome  twitter_logo_small  linkedin_small1  facebook_logo_small3  youtube-logo1  google-plus-logo-red-265px

LivHome

  • Certified Senior Advisor, Society of Certified Senior Advisors
  • Former Member, Board of Directors, March of Dimes of Georgia
  • President/CEO, SportsCom, Inc.

Blaine Warketine, of Vimty  twitter_logo_small  linkedin_small1  facebook_logo_small3

blaine

  • Doctor of Medicine, Medical College of Wisconsin
  • Residency, Orthopedics, University of Maryland School of Medicine
  • Fellowship, Orthopedic Knee Conditions, Long Beach Memorial Medical Center
  • MBA, Entrepreneurship, University of Utah David Eccles School of Business

 

Healthgrades

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Healthgrades

This week, Diana and I sat down with Dr. Brad Bowman and Nickey Scarborough, of Healthgrades.  They’re a healthcare IT company that provides several valuable services to the community at large as well as to the healthcare industry.  One of Healthgrades’ core offerings relates to transparency and healthcare consumerism.  When you need to find a physician to address a particular health need from primary care to a specialist, the company’s website allows the patient and/or their family to conduct a search of their database.

The Healthgrades platform utilizes a number of available data sources to compile a match score that gives a measure of confidence a particular physician has sufficient experience and positive outcomes to be considered as a viable option for providing your care.  You can search by provider name, specialty, condition, or procedure, along with location/radius.

Your results will give a list of possible providers, each with a rank for volume of this given procedure they’ve performed, along with a report of any sanctions or board actions that have been taken.  Similarly, Healthgrades provides prospective patients with access to outcomes and patient satisfaction data across the gamut of service lines and procedures they offer.  Patients can review a given hospital’s rank and compare it to the national average for that procedure.

But, these useful services are only scratching the surface for what Healthgrades is able to do for health systems and hospitals.  The company is able to use a wide array of readily-available health and consumer data for patients in a given service area to give valuable predictive insights around outcomes for a given health problem.  Things such as number of rooms in your home, whether it’s rented or mortgaged, how financially stable a family is, along with buying habits combined with numerous other data points can give surprisingly accurate pictures of what a given population’s tendency toward ER re-admissions or poor outcomes/compliance with care.

Through an engagement with Healthgrades, using their population analytics, a health system can be very strategic in their marketing efforts to help make that revenue spend be far more likely to help the system achieve its goals and deliver a higher level of care/outcomes.

Special Guests:

Brad Bowman, MD, Chief Medical Officer, of Healthgrades twitter_logo_small  linkedin_small1  Pinterest LOGO  google-plus-logo-red-265px  facebook_logo_small3

 

Nickey Scarborough, VP of Digital Editorial, Healthgrades  linkedin_small1

nickey

 

  • MHA, Health Administration, Xavier University
  • Former Director, Client Delivery Services, WebMD
  • Previous Content Director, PERFECT SENSE digital, LLC
  • Former Senior Consultant, Deloitte & Touche

This show brought to you by:

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Hospital Acquired Conditions

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Hospital Acquired Conditions

According to CDC, there were over 700,000 hospital acquired conditions in 2011 (in this case, infections).  When you add those numbers to other preventable situations such as falls, wrong drug/dose/patient, and others, it’s clear that hospitals can be potentially-dangerous places.  This week, Diana and I sat down with two experts from companies that are tackling this problem from different directions.

HanGenix, an Atlanta-based start-up is developing an innovative technology that employs ultrasound transmitters/receivers on soap dispensers, on the clinicians’ badges, and in the patients’ rooms with the goal of increasing compliance with hand-washing standards.  CEO, Jeff Kline, talked about how each patient bed is “guarded” by an ultrasonic receiver that communicates with the clinician’s badge and soap dispenser in the room or nearby.

The system starts a clock that will alert the health worker that they need to re-wash their hands if too much time elapses between washing their hands and touching the patient.  The bed’s zone receiver also prompts an audible alert on the worker’s badge if they approach the patient’s bed without having registered a hand-washing event detected by the system.

Early returns from health systems that are participating in the testing of the prototype have shown that hand washing compliance is as low as 40% before implementing the technology and rises rapidly once it is deployed.  This is significant, as hand-washing has been identified as one of the most effective means to prevent spread of infections from patient-to-patient in a healthcare environment.

Synensis’s Chief Innovation Officer, Rick Stone, joined the conversation to talk about how their company works with their healthcare clients to assess the organization’s internal culture relating to behaviors that reduce hospital acquired conditions such as falls, infections, and other sentinel events.  Through an in-depth assessment at the outset of their engagement, Synensis’s team formulates a picture of how an organization prioritizes policies/procedures that can reduce/prevent those sentinel events.

The company then begins to interface with all levels of leadership and front-line providers to raise awareness and put in place actions such as debriefings after untoward events occur so that better team work can result.  Synensis also helps hospitals identify areas of their organization that have particularly low rates of sentinel events to draw from their localized culture/approach to prevention to the betterment of the organization as a whole.  As Rick stated, “Hospitals have teams of experts.  But, few have expert teams,” pointing out that in many industries, healthcare included, poor communication and/or teamwork is the primary culprit in accidents.

Special Guests:

Jeff Kline, CEO/Co-founder, HanGenix  linkedin_small1  twitter_logo_small

Kline

 

  • MBA, Goizueta Business School, Emory University
  • Previous Manager, Deloitte Consulting
  • Former Director of Marketing, BARD Urology Division
  • Previous VP Marketing, Genesis Biosciences

Rick Stone, Chief Innovation Officer, Synensis  twitter_logo_small  linkedin_small1  facebook_logo_small3  youtube-logo1

stone

  • MS Clinical Psychology, Vanderbilt University
  • Former President, StoryWork Institute
  • Previous StoryAnalytics Master, IDEAS
  • Fluent in Spanish

This program made possible by:

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SkyTherapist

SkyTherapist

SkyTherapist

This week we sat down with the co-founders of SkyTherapist.  Sky Therapist, Inc is a virtual platform for mental health support addressing the major complaints of patients in their course of treatment. They offer integrative solutions for intelligent patient-therapist matching, quick initial assessment, and continuity of care.

CEO, Afshan Ali, and CFO, Keith Jones, shared their story about how they decided there must be a better way to provide patients in need with access to a mental health professional such as a psychologist or psychiatrist.

Keith talked about how as a teenager, he was present when his father died, causing him to experience great anxiety and emotional pain.  He was hospitalized for a few weeks but felt he did not receive very effective mental health care while he was there.

Afshan discussed how she developed an interest in neurology and mental health during her years in medical school before changing career paths.  The two of them looked at the landscape of how mental health is delivered and felt there was an opportunity to create a new platform that could help people in need find the therapist best suited for them.

As they got to work on building their virtual platform that incorporates telemedicine technology, they felt that a key element that would set them apart was going to be a matching algorithm, paired with carefully-chosen intake questions for the patient-to-be.  The purpose of this design is intended to make the process of linking up with a professional that is experientially suited and a fit personality-wise.

We talked about the fact that for persons in crisis, the process of trying to find that personal fit that allows them to be able to be open and get the most of their therapy can be overwhelming.  Having to go through talking about what the reason is for seeking help over and over to professional after professional, trying to find a fit can often cause patients in need to give up on finding help.

SkyTherapist is able to quickly provide several professionals for the patient to talk to who are much more likely to be a good fit for the patient.  The platform also provides for some communication through correspondence with their provider between sessions.  It also has a component that allows provider and patient to agree upon self-care activities such as exercise or others and actually track their compliance.

The company will be focusing much of its early launch (July 2015) on providing services to businesses with Employee Assistance Programs.  This will give them ability to scale more quickly while providing their client companies with much more effective and cost-efficient care to employees who need access to a mental health pro.

When you have the chance to hear how/why these experts built this healthcare platform it’s clear they are dedicated to insuring patients in need of professional mental health care, SkyTherapist is clearly providing a promising solution.

Special Guests:

Afshan Ali, CEO/Co-founder of SkyTherapist  linkedin_small1  Pinterest LOGO  facebook_logo_small3  twitter_logo_small  youtube-logo1

SkyTherapist

  • BBA, Management Information Services, Southern Methodist University Cox School of Business
  • Former Senior Consultant, Deloitt Consulting
  • Active Healthcare Consultant
  • Speaks English, Hindi, Urdu

Keith Jones, CFO/Co-founder of SkyTherapist  linkedin_small1

Keith

  • Managing Partner, HarCap Commercial Funding
  • Former Owner, Eclipse Investment Group
  • Multiple Successful Entrepreneurial Ventures

This show brought to you by:

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Exercise is Medicine

Exercise is Medicine

Exercise is Medicine

This week we focused on the value of physical activity to our overall state of wellness.  We were joined in studio by Dr. Felipe Lobelo of Emory University, Mike Tinney, of Fitness Interactive Experience, and JP Matzegheit, of Wahoo Fitness.  We talked about the physiologic importance of physical activity along with innovative technologies that facilitate inspiring people to get moving.

Physical inactivity now ranks as the 2nd leading cause of mortality in the world. However, too few health systems and health care providers include physical activity (PA) as part of the prevention and management of obesity and chronic diseases. For 5 years, the Exercise is Medicine (EIM) initiative of the American College of Sports Medicine has helped build local networks to support the systematic inclusion of PA in health care in the US and more than 40 countries in 5 continents via the “EIM Solution”, an evidence-based approach to assessing patients, prescribing appropriate PA and developing community-based PA resources linked to health services and public awareness. The

Large-scale implementation of the EIM Solution across different populations, settings and health care systems is a complex process. The EIM-GRCC serves as a coordinating center for EIM implementation projects by offering state-of –art consultation research and evaluation support, training, policy, cross-national networking and management dimensions of EIM programming to support the initiative.

Fitness Interactive Experience (FIX) has developed a tech platform that incorporates a video game-inspired approach to motivating people to walk and engage in brief periods of other physical activities.  FIX provides their application to businesses seeking to improve the health of their employees for use over 6-8 weeks as a fitness challenge.  The application uses the popular zombie theme to get the user to walk more each day.

The application interfaces with wearable fitness devices such as FitBit to track physical activity such as walking/running.  In order for their character to survive in the game they’ll have to walk while wearing their fitness device to “walk/run” their character to safe zones.  The early data from their initial challenges has shown promising statistics regarding the level of participation and engagement by employees using the application.

Wahoo Fitness produces a range of wearable fitness devices designed to give feedback on a variety of physical activities and bio data.  The sensors enable athletes to become more efficient runners, swimmers, and riders through the use of accelerometers in the sensors.  Additionally, users can train smarter by monitoring heart rate instead of subjective rating of perceived exertion (RPE).

Users are able to compare current training session against previous sessions to evaluate number of reps, cadence, and other training data.

Special Guests:

Dr. Felipe Lobelo, MD, PhD, Emory University, Global Health Department, Exercise is Medicine

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Exercise is Medicine

  • Associate Professor, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University
  • Previous Lead Epidemiologist, CDC
  • Doctor of Medicine, Universidad del Rosario
  • PhD Exercise Science, University of South Carolina, Columbia

Mike Tinney, CEO/Founder, Fitness Interactive Experience/ A Step Ahead Challenge

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Fitness Interactive Experience

  • Previous CEO, White Wolf
  • Former President, CCP America
  • Nearly 20 years of experience in the video gaming industry from developer to leadership roles

JP Matzigkeit, CEO/Founder of Wahoo Fitness  facebook_logo_small3  twitter_logo_small  linkedin_small1  youtube logo  google-plus-logo-red-265px  Pinterest-logo

JP Matzegheit

  • MBA, University of North Carolina, Kenan Flagler Business School
  • Previous Advisory Board Chair, Founder and President, Chastain Park Conservancy
  • Former AVP Compensation, Cox Enterprises
  • Avid cyclist

ADHD

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ADHD

This week I was pleased to sit down with ADHD expert, Elaine Taylor-Klaus of ImpactADHD.com.  As a parent of three children who each have experienced some measure of ADHD in their lives, and as a patient who subsequently discovered that she, too, was an ADHD patient.

CDC.gov lists these statistics about ADHD:

  • Approximately 11% of children 4-17 years of age (6.4 million) have been diagnosed with ADHD as of 2011.
  • The percentage of children with an ADHD diagnosis continues to increase, from 7.8% in 2003 to 9.5% in 2007 and to 11.0% in 2011.
  • Rates of ADHD diagnosis increased an average of 3% per year from 1997 to 2006 [Read article] and an average of approximately 5% per year from 2003 to 2011.
  • Boys (13.2%) were more likely than girls (5.6%) to have ever been diagnosed with ADHD.
  • The average age of ADHD diagnosis was 7 years of age, but children reported by their parents as having more severe ADHD were diagnosed earlier.

With just over 1 in 10 children experiencing ADHD or one of its sub-types, it’s a significant disruptor of quality of life for many, many people.  We talked about how frustrating it can be for parents of hyper-active ADHD children and how she, herself, learned first-hand how challenging it can be to keep calm and avoid yelling to reign in their high energy kid(s).

Given her experiences in her own home, Elaine and a business partner, Diane Dempster, decided to start ImpactADHD.com.  The website serves as a resource for parents struggling to find answers for questions on how to better handle the stresses that comes with ADHD children.

The site provides recommendations for identifying suitable physicians and other professionals who can help with diagnosis and treatment.  Additionally, the organization provides a coaching approach to help parents learn other ways to communicate and how to deal with stress, among others.

ImpactADHD.com describes what they do this way, “ImpactADHD.com helps parents help their kids with ADHD and ADD, anywhere, anytime. ImpactADHD uses a combination of training, coaching and support resources, online and on the phone, to provide the “how to” that parents really need, whether they are new to the world of complex kids, or worn-out from years of management. By helping parents put strategies into action, and teaching them to make those strategies work best for their families, we guide parents to radically improve family life and empower their kids for independence and success.”

Special Guest:

Elaine Taylor-Klaus, CEO/Certified Coach, ImpactADHD  facebook_logo_small3  twitter_logo_small  Pinterest LOGO  google-plus-logo-red-265px  feed-logo  linkedin_small1

ImpactADHD

  • Certified Professional Co-Active Coach, The Coaches Training Institute
  • Professional Certified Coach, International Coach Federation
  • BA, College of Social Studies & Sociology, Wesleyan College
  • Parent of 3 children who have experienced ADHD, along with herself, who was diagnosed as an adult
  • Member, National Board of Directors, Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.  CHADD.org

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Pediatric Health Technologies

Pediatric Health Technologies

This week we had experts on the show talking about developments in Pediatric Health Technologies.  We were joined in studio by Leanne West, Principal Research Scientist at Georgia Tech Research Institute, and Paul Spearman, Chief Research Officer with Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.  They came by to talk about the innovative collaboration between academic research institutions, Emory and Georgia Institute of Technology, that help accelerate the rate that important technologies can be made available to the pediatric patient population in need.  Carly Kiseleczynk, CEO/Founder of BrainChild Technologies also came by to talk about the intriguing technology that allows parents to have more interactive interaction with young infants through their pacifier-controlled device that interfaces and can control applications and toys through non-nutritional sucking patterns.

We discussed the goals of these important Atlanta research institutions of helping pediatric health providers to treat the unique needs of very young patients.  They have what they call a “Quick Wins” program where they engage with promising technology companies to help them bring their solutions to market within a very-fast 18 months.

Carly talked about how they were able to advance their work on developing an interactive technology that allows infants to learn how to control toys and tablet-based applications with their sucking patterns.  The infants are able to turn on a mobile or night light, or make remote-controlled toys move.  And they’re able to advance language skills through interacting with special tablet-based applications that can provide data on certain developmental milestones.

Both of these initiatives can benefit from financial support to allow them to hasten the pace of their research and make these helpful technologies available to pediatric patients in need sooner.

Special Guests:

Leanne West, Principal Research Scientist with Georgia Tech Research Institute  linkedin_small1

leanne

  • Education, Vanderbilt University
  • Former High School Physics Teacher
  • 17 years as Research Scientist Georgia Tech Research Institute
  • Recipient, 2014 Woman of the Year, Georgia Women In Technology

 

Paul Spearman, Chief Research Officer with Childrens Healthcare of Atlanta  linkedin_small1

Childrens Healthcare of Atlanta

  •  Doctor of Medicine, University of Texas Southwestern Medical School
  • Residency, Internal Medicine and Pediatrics, The Ohio State University
  • Residency, Infectious Disease, Washington University in St. Louis
  • Professor, Emory University School of Medicine

Carly Kiselyczynk, CEO/Founder, of BrainChild Technologies  linkedin_small1

BrainChild Technologies

  • PhD, Medical Sciences, Neurosciences, Karolinska Institutet
  • Published research author
  • Postdoctoral Fellow, Yale Depression Research Group
  • Recipient 2012 Ruth L. Kirchstein National Research Service Award

 

 

Eating Disorders

eating disorders information network

Eating Disorders

This week we focused on eating disorders.  I sat down with experts from Eating Disorders Information Network, a non-profit organization aimed at outreach to increase awareness/prevention among students in grade school to high school, and helping people identify resources for treatment.  According to the National Anorexia Nervosa Association, eating disorders are a serious problem, with as many as 24 million Americans suffering with some form of disorder from anorexia, to bulemia, to binge/purge, and more.

The problem affects both men and women, children and adults, across all demographics.  And according to Dr. Dina Zeckhausen, founder of EDIN, eating disorders are more deadly than other mental illness.  When you consider dysfunctional eating habits such as overly-restrictive dieting, comfort eating, and others, as many as 80-90% of us are impacted at some time by potentially-problematic attitudes about food.

EDIN is working to engage young people beginning in grade school through high school to promote self-acceptance and to share information about the dangers of risky behaviors such as “clubs” that foster unhealthy choices such as eating crackers and water only for lunch with a group of peers.  Their website describes their mission in this way, “The Eating Disorders Information Network (EDIN) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the prevention of eating disorders through education, outreach, and action.  EDIN is committed to addressing the problem of eating disorders on a societal level.  We are devoted to: 

  • Preventing eating disorders
  • Increasing public awareness of the personal, familial, and cultural/media influences which contribute to eating disorders
  • Helping those already suffering to find the therapeutic services they need

The organization strives to serve as a comprehensive resource and educational guide for those wanting to learn more about eating disorders, those seeking help, and those gathering and distributing information about available treatment options both in the Atlanta area and nationwide.

Special Guests:

Dina Zeckhausen, PhD, Founder of Eating Disorders Information Network  twitter_logo_small  linkedin_small1  youtube-logo1  google-plus-logo-red-265px  Pinterest LOGO

Eating Disorders Information Network

  • PhD, Clinical-Community Psychology, University of South Carolina
  • Active private practice psychologist
  • Well-known public speaker on the topic of eating disorders
  • Published author and playwrite

Hallie Udelson, Eating Disorders Information Network

hallie

  • BA, Psychology, Emory University
  • 2016 Candidate, Master of Public Health, Emory University
  • Developing curriculum for school outreach initiatives for EDIN

Sara Pannell, Incoming Director, Eating Disorders Information Network

Trillium Springs Counseling

  • Licensed Family and Marriage Counselor, Trillium Springs Counseling
  • MS, Family & Marriage Counseling, Fuller Theological Seminary
  • Previous Bi-lingual Clinician I, San Fernando Valley Community Mental Health Center

Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy

Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy

Dr. Helen Gelly of Hyperbaric Physicians of Georgia discusses hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy

This week we sat down with internationally-known expert on the subject of Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy, Dr. Helen Gelly.  This treatment modality has been available to patients with poorly-healing wounds, thermal injuries, decompression sickness, late effects of radiation, and several other problems for decades.  And while there is a quality body of evidence supporting the use of this treatment for clinically-appropriate patients, many of the patients who could benefit from access to it never get to know it’s available.

This is due in large part to the fact that of ~159 US medical colleges, only ~30 offer hyperbaric oxygen therapy and wound resolution as taught specialties.  That means that approximately 85% of graduating physicians have had very little (if any) exposure to academic information about the modality.  The result is that they often miss opportunities to add the treatment to the patient’s care plan, which in turn delays (or even prevents) these problem wounds from healing.

Dr. Gelly shared information about the history of hyperbaric oxygen therapy and we talked about the physiology of what’s happening during the course of therapy.  We discussed a couple of major groups of patients whose clinical outcomes tend to be significantly improved with access to hyperbaric medicine, diabetic ulcer patients and patients experiencing persistent late effects of radiation.  The aim is to get credible information to the public so that both physicians and patients in need can educate themselves about it.  Atlanta is unique in that both inside the city and in numerous suburbs, patients can receive hyperbaric oxygen therapy in hospital-based or UHMS accredited free-standing programs.  It’s also paid for by Medicare, Medicaid, and commercial insurance companies for these evidence-based indications.

Special Guest:

Dr. Helen Gelly, MD of HyperbaRXs  twitter_logo_small  google-plus-logo-red-265px  facebook_logo_small3  linkedin_small1

helen

  • Doctor of Medicine, Emory University School of Medicine
  • Internship/Residency: Pediatrics/Emergency Medicine at Emory University Affiliated Hospitals
  • Board Certified in Emergency Medicine
  • Fellow of the American College of Emergency Physicians
  • Fellow of the American College of Certified Wound Specialists
  • Subspecialty Certified Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine