Healthcare Policy, Hand Surgery & Incontinence

[HTML1] Part 1
Healthcare Policy – Changes & Challenges: Your Health Matters
The Center for Healthcare Policy at Scott & White provides information and education at the state and national level to the public, policy makers and elected officials on solutions to the challenges facing health care delivery and financing in Texas and the nation.

From the Show:
“Health Policy,” that sounds a bit dry doesn’t it, yet policy drives America’s two trillion dollar plus healthcare system, and closer to home, Dr. James Rohack, Director of the Scott & White Center for Health Care Policy, is very interested in the medical, social, employment and economic consequences of making the right policy decisions – and he’ the first to tell you that lots of folks are looking over his shoulder, carefully analyzing and scrutinizing the Centers positions. . . we started our discussion with an overview of the Center for Healthcare Policy . . .

Part 2
Hand Surgery, Peripheral Nerve Problems & Mobility : Your Health Matters

From the Show:
Christopher Springmann: ” . . . first Dr. Robert Weber’s personal story will set the stage, from his childhood fascination with the hand, and later peripheral nerve problems. Then we’ll discuss diabetes and prevention strategies.

“Doctor, and let’s just have a broad discussion initially about hand surgery here at Scott & White Healthcare.”

Dr. Weber: “. . .hand surgery has a good history here at Scott & White. We’ve been providing hand care through the Department of Orthopedics and the Division of Plastic Surgery for many, many years. We’ve now added additional hand surgeons within orthopedics, within plastic surgery to help service the patients within central Texas. We see patients who are born with congenital hand differences.”

“We see patients who are injured, and we see patients who develop things over time such as carpal tunnel syndrome and arthritis. We’re in the position to be able to offer essentially anything for any hand problem that a person may develop.”

Part 3
Urinary Incontinence & Prostate Surgery – Diagnosis & Treatments: Your Health Matters

From the Show:
Erin Bird, MD: “There are many aspects of a patient’s quality of life that we see. And sometimes people suffer from urinary incontinence for a variety of reasons. And so that’s one of the things that we restore.

” . . . there is nothing more rewarding than when a patient is suffering from this problem and you can help them. There is nothing more rewarding in medicine, urology, than this patient population, because they’re extremely grateful when you can restore, in their minds, some normalcy.”

CS: “Tell me, doctor, how does urinary incontinence after prostate surgery impact and even severely impact a man’s quality of life?”

EB: “We see impacts that are self-esteem. It can contribute to social isolation. We have some patients who were active. They played golf. They went to the movies. They went to concerts. And, unfortunately, now they are fearful maybe that they’re going to have an odor. They’re going to leak. They’re going to have an accident. It also can contribute to even a desire for intimacy. While they may have preservation of erectile function, they’re fearful that their urinary incontinence may impact their partner.”

More about Dr. James Rohack
Dr. J. James Rohack, M.D., F.A.C.C., F.A.C.P., is the Director of the Center for Healthcare Policy and Medical Director for Health Plan System Improvement at Scott & White Healthcare in Temple, TX. A professor of Internal Medicine at Texas A&M College of Medicine, Dr. Rohack earned his B.S. from University of Texas-El Paso and his M.D. from University of Texas-Galveston. He trained in internal medicine and cardiology, and joined Scott & White in 1986. He was just elected full-time president of the American Medical Association, and recently met with President Obama to address rising health care costs in the U.S.

More about Dr. Robert Weber
Robert A. Weber, M.D. is an Associate Professor of Surgery and the Chief of the Section of Hand Surgery at Scott & White. He obtained his medical degree from Texas A&M University and completed his Plastic Surgery residency at Scott & White. Dr. Weber completed an advanced fellowship in hand surgery at the University of Texas in San Antonio with David P. Green. In addition to Dr. Weber’s clinical expertise, he has won multiple awards for his research in hand surgery.

More about Dr. Erin Bird
Erin T. Bird, M.D., M.B.A., is Chief of the section of Genitourinary Reconstruction and Voiding Dysfunction at Scott & White Healthcare in Temple, TX. An Associate Professor of Surgery at Texas A&M College of Medicine, Dr. Bird earned his B.S. from Howard Payne University, his M.D. from Baylor College of Medicine, and his M.B.A. from George Washington University. He trained in general surgery and urology, and joined Scott & White in 2003. In his practice, he specializes in Genitourinary Reconstruction, Incontinence, Neurourology, Urology, Urology Surgery, and Vasectomy Reversal.

More about Scott & White Healthcare
When Arthur C. Scott, M.D., and Raleigh R. White Jr., M.D., began their medical practice in Temple, Texas in 1897, they shared one fundamental conviction: medicine must serve the people. Today, Scott & White Healthcare is a fully integrated health system — the largest multi-specialty practice in Texas and the sixth largest group practice in the nation. Scott & White employs more than 1,100 health care providers and research scientists who care for patients covering 25,000 square miles across Central Texas. For more information, go to SW.org/Web/PatientsAndVisitors.

© 2010 by On the Path Productions, LLC.  All rights reserved.

About Christopher Springmann

Christopher Springmann is Executive Producer and Senior Correspondent of Life, Love and Health, the award-winning health and wellness program that reaches millions daily on multiple news, talk and sports channels including Sirius XM, CNN, FOX, NPR affiliates, American Forces Network, and HealthRadio.net.

Life, Love and Health is also Mr. Springmann’s latest endeavor in a journey of “creative convergence” that started as a photographer for Time, Fortune, National Geographic and Smithsonian magazines. He moved into writing leadership profiles for Chief Executive and California CEO magazines, which in turn provided the inspiration for creating Life, Love and Health: to fulfill the unmet need of telling America’s health story. Mr. Springmann meets this need in entertaining and emotionally engaging ways, with the authentic voices of real people, including a diverse group of doctors and nurses, patients and their families, plus researchers and innovators in the health-and-wellness field. He relies on the credibility and persuasiveness of people’s passionate storytelling to get the point across. People identify with the experiences of others and are encouraged to take positive, attainable actions to improve their personal and family health.

Christopher is also the Host of Life, Love and Health on WomensRadio. Life, Love and Health seeks to ultimately make a difference in people’s lives by encouraging individuals to take positive, attainable actions to improve their personal and family health.