Yale's Healthcare 2009 Conference and the Sherpa

I am preparing to speak at Yale School of Management's Healthcare 2009 conference. It looks to be quite a conference. The theme this year will be

"Where is the Value? Managing Cost and Quality in a Healthcare System Facing Reform."

From the site:

The Yale Healthcare Conference is a joint effort between the School of Management and the Health Professions Schools at Yale University that aims to bring together professionals, academics, and students to engage in an instructive interdisciplinary conversation concerning current healthcare issues. This will be the 5th consecutive year and we expect the conference to continue growing to over 400 participants.

The planned title and theme for Healthcare 2009 is Where is the Value? Managing Cost and Quality in a Healthcare System Facing Reform. This conference will focus on a theme of value in the healthcare system. The conference aims to address three principle questions:

1) How do we provide better care to more patients while keeping costs under control?
2) What are innovative public and private solutions to this problem?
3) What sort of opportunities and challenges will potential healthcare reform bring?

I think that this is a timely conference. With the administration supporting reform and already a record level of Medicare Audits in the system, it is clear that America will face a drastic change in the way healthcare is provided in this country.

My breakout session is on, guess what......

Personalized Medicine!!

I will be accompanied by Dr Aidan C Power of Pfizer.

Aidan's team is at the forefront of Personalized Medicine and PGx at Pfizer. Aidan has been addressing several issues and study design for personalized medicine. One recent example is the issue of race and ethnicity in PGX.

Aidan has even been briefing the Personalized Medicine Coalition, something we at Helix Health of Connecticut are proud to be a part of.

The Sherpa Says: Healthcare IS Changing. This conference is a great way to learn about some of those changes. I hope to learn alot!

Reader's Points and Clarification.

Dear Sherpa, I am an avid reader of your blog and quite often marveled by your great writing style.

Today, however, I cannot resist to add another point to your list:
The sherpa says and might be right in saying so:
"7. The lack of medical training for genetic counselors
8. The lack of genetics training for medical professionals "

Dr. Look (me) would humbly like to add:

9. The (frequent) lack of medical clinical experience/training for human geneticists

Keep up the good work
Regs Dr. Markus P. Look,
Internist Bonn, GERMANY


Doctor Look,
Thank you so much for your comments. I would like to add that the street runs several ways. We have several shortcomings. In the United States in order for a geneticist to train in Medical Genetics (which is a 2 year program), you must first have 2 years of clinical experience in an ACGME accredited residency in just about any field. Most medical geneticists are pediatricians. This is a natural extension as the majority of classical genetic diseases start in childhood. However, there are a little under 100 geneticists trained in Internal Medicine. Approximately 1 in 10......

So I may agree that most medical geneticists are not Internists, but there are many who at least rotated through IM in medical school and elder statesmen who are internists who grandfathered into pediatrics. Much more clinical exposure than new graduates of genetic counseling programs....

But I do agree.....as genetics changes from a small sub specialty of pediatrics into pediatrics becoming a small sub specialty of genetics...we will most indubitably need more IM geneticists!

Linked together into a network preferably......

That's why I am up here at Yale.....

The Sherpa Says: If you don't know about the 24th specialty in medicine, how would you ever know how to refer to them? Looks like the ACMG needs to hire 23andMe's PR firm!