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Stacey Kerr, MD |
Click here to read our interview with Dr. Stacey Kerr
Click here to see Dr. Kerr's REACHE topic & learner objectives
BIO: Stacey Kerr is a family physician and the author of a recently published book: Homebirth in the Hospital - Integrating Natural Childbirth with Modern Medicine. Dr. Kerr has provided family-centered childbirth experiences for her patients for over fifteen years, and knowing these babies since they were just a heartbeat inside their mother has been the greatest joy of her professional life.
During the 1970s and early `80s, Dr. Kerr lived on The Farm, an intentional spiritual community in Summertown, Tennessee, that was known for its midwifery skills. While there, she collected statistics for Ina May Gaskin's groundbreaking book, Spiritual Midwifery, which revealed that women at The Farm had a remarkably low rate of Cesarean or other technical intervention and a high rate of healthy babies. Watching these skilled midwives, as well as an older country doctor who provided a style of personal care rarely seen in these days of large clinics and HMOs, Dr. Kerr became inspired to become a physician. Dr. Kerr has two children, both natural childbirths. Her first was born at a birthing center in central Missouri and the second was born at home on The Farm in Summertown Tennessee. In addition to her two grown daughters she now has a grown grandson and a growing granddaughter. That's a lot of growth!
Dr. Kerr writes about current issues in medical practice and has published extensively in medical journals, including JAMA, California Family Physician, and Sonoma Medicine. For six years she wrote a monthly health column for the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. She has been active in outreach to the medically under-served through her private practice, providing free medical care to patients who have no insurance coverage, and providing medical information at minimal cost through her Web site (www.the-doctors-inn.com). She has served in leadership roles in medical societies, including two years as State Chair of the Public Outreach Committee for the California Academy of Family Physicians, and two years as chair of the credentialing committee at her local hospital, a position that allowed her to credential midwives for hospital staff privileges. Dr. Kerr's passion outside of medicine and writing is her cobalt blue Harley-Davidson motorcycle. She currently lives in Santa Rosa, California.
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Dr. Mark Sloan
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Click here to read our interview with Dr. Mark Sloan
Click here to read Dr. Sloan's blog
Click here to see Dr. Sloan's REACHE topic & learner objectives
BIO: I’ve been a pediatrician and a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics for more than 25 years. I graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1975 with a biology degree, and received my MD degree from the University of Illinois in Chicago in 1979. Following pediatric residency training at the University of Michigan, I joined The Permanente Medical Group in Sacramento, California, in 1982. Since 1990, I have practiced with The Permanente Medical Group in Santa Rosa, California, where I served as Chief of Pediatrics from 1997-2002. My other passion is teaching. I mentor high school and college students interested in a career in medicine, and teach medical students and family practice residents here in Santa Rosa. I am an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Community and Family Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. My writing has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner, Notre Dame Magazine and the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. I am a member of the editorial board of Sonoma Medicine and a frequent contributor to that award-winning magazine.
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J.D. Kleinke
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Click here to read our interview with J.D. Kleinke
Click here to see J.D. Kleinke's website
Click here to see Mr. Kleinke's REACHE topic and learner objectives
BIO: Though it's my third book about health care, Catching Babies is my first published novel. I started researching and writing Catching Babies in 2003 as a non-fiction expose of the messy and often fierce technical, moral, and cultural conflicts at the heart of high-risk obstetric medicine and womens' health. Earlier study of the clinical practice patterns of childbirth and gynecologic surgery, combined with fortuitous friendships with physicians and midwives at critical moments in their training, coalesced in a stark idea I had yet to encounter in the health services literature: obsterics and gynecology stand at ground zero of a broader health care system pulled apart by polarizing forces that often have little to do with medicine, ethics, or patients' real needs.
Catching Babies was originally intended as a clinically detailed study of how these wildly problematic and deeply misunderstood medical subjects play out in the real world. It was conceived as the general public's first hard look behind the medical curtain into the practice, politics, and often bizarre culture of obstetrics and gynecology, as smashed together into a single specialty and "organized" in the most disorganized health care system in the world. It would also map out the complex turf war between most (but not all) OB/GYNs and the growing and diverse ranks of midwives.
I'm a medical economist, author, and patient advocate. I've helped create four health care information organizations, served as a health care business columnist for the Wall Street Journal, and advised both sides of the political aisle on health policy and legislation. In 2004, I established the Omnimedix Institute, the Portland-based non-profit that helped define, lead and safeguard the way for patients' access to their own medical information on the Web. I also helped establish Health Grades, a health care information company based in Denver, and HCIA (now Solucient), the nation's pioneering health care database research company.
I've been a regular contributor to the policy journal, Health Affairs and The Wall Street Journal. My work has also appeared in JAMA, Barron's, the British Medical Journal, Modern Healthcare, and numerous other publications. My first book, Bleeding Edge: The Business of Health Care in the New Century (Aspen, 1998) was a foundational textbook for many physician-executive MBA programs and health administration graduate programs in the U.S. My follow-up, Oxymorons: The Myth of a US Health Care System (Wiley, 2001), was a scathing and oft-cited criticism of what is wrong with the health insurance industry, and one of the earliest calls for systemic health care reform.
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