So much has happened since the petition against the ABIM MOC started on 7/21/2023, which is nearing 20,000 signatures. Physicians have called upon their societies and organizations to offer statements on their behalf, but only The Society for Cardiovascular Angiography & Interventions (SCAI) so far has done so. Drs. Srihari Naidu and Allison Dupont, both members and leaders of SCAI, come on the show to explain why they came up with the statement and what it means to the membership. Is there ...
Aug 29, 2023•55 min
Making her triumphant return to the show is Urvi Shah, MD, hem/onc and multiple myeloma expert at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, this time to shed light on how dietary considerations present a low-risk way to modify the microbiome and help prevent cancer. She opines on whether her findings on the association between diet and cancer in myeloma will be scalable in other malignancies, offers a few of her findings related to dietary habits and cancer diagnoses, describes the double standard...
Aug 22, 2023•1 hr
Dr. Wes Fisher joins the show to continue highlighting ABIM recertification and the MOC program following a petition that has gathered over 12,000 signatures to end this program. Dr. Fisher is a clinical cardiac electrophysiologist at NorthShore University HealthSystem in Evanston, IL; he is also a clinical Associate Professor at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. Dr. Fisher is triple board-certified in Internal Medicine (Grandfathered per the ABIM), cardiology, and cardiac e...
Aug 15, 2023•1 hr 24 min
A lot has been stated about the Maintenance of Certification (MOC) implemented by the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM,) and many physicians, regardless of specialty, have been opposed to the MOC as it adds cost, burden, and takes away from patient care. This led Dr. Aaron Goodman from UCSD to start a petition to end the MOC, which gathered unwavering support with over 10,000 signatures in 2 weeks. In response, Dr. Richard Baron, the president and CEO of ABIM, has agreed to come on the ...
Aug 08, 2023•1 hr 28 min
Kuljit Kapur, DO, MBA, hospice and palliative medicine specialist, is today’s guest of honor to bring about new perspectives and clarify some misconceptions regarding palliative and hospice care. Dr. Kapur shares her inspiration to go into palliative care and to pursue her MBA, reflects on her regular routine of home visits and how it affected her personal life, offers a way in which we can change the negative stigma around palliative care, opines on an appropriate timeline to begin palliative c...
Aug 01, 2023•46 min
Ilana Yurkiewicz, MD, medical oncologist and primary care physician with a focus on cancer patients, and esteemed author of the book “Fragmented: A Doctor's Quest to Piece Together American Health Care,” joins the show as today’s guest of honor. Chadi and Dr. Yurkiewicz discuss her unorthodox career path and inspiration to write the book, where the fragmentation within the healthcare system can be pinpointed (layers upon layers), the many narratives and original research she adds to the book to ...
Jul 25, 2023•1 hr
Dr. Julie Gralow, Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of ASCO (American Society of Medical Oncology,) the largest society for oncologists around the world, shares her career journey until she assumed the post of ASCO-CMO during the COVID-19 pandemic. Julie is a pioneer in global oncology and a world-renowned leader in breast cancer, being an innovator and a researcher at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle for over 20 years. Her impact on the field is second to none. Dr. ...
Jul 11, 2023•57 min
In another change-of-pace episode, Chadi hosts Tom Harari, MBA, serial entrepreneur and writer of personal finance, business, and self-improvement. Tom shares his personal business ventures and professional story to date, opens up about how heartbreak in his personal life was a truly life-changing moment from which to grow, and recaps his viral Twitter thread of the “38 lessons I'd tell my 18 year old self.” There are plenty of advice nuggets and thought-provoking tidbits from this honest and se...
Jun 27, 2023•1 hr 5 min
Alex Herrera, MD, associate professor of medicine and lymphoma “guru” at the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center, joins the show on the last day of the ASCO Annual Meeting after being on stage for his Plenary session. Dr. Herrera shares the remarkable, resilient story of his family life, upbringing, life-altering injury, and improbable journey from playing baseball in Miami to a leadership role at City of Hope. Captivating, inspiring, gut-wrenching, and uplifting, Dr. Herrera’s account is t...
Jun 20, 2023•1 hr 2 min
Tyler Olson of Olson Consulting LLC joins the show to share his financial advice and planning for physicians and medical students as they go through their careers. Chadi and Tyler hit on the early financial decisions that medical students and early career physicians should make to support their lives as they deal with delayed income, why Tyler decided to open his own consulting firm, and why he focuses his consulting solely for the benefit of medical professionals. He shares how medical students...
Jun 13, 2023•1 hr 2 min
Nitin Jain, MD, associate professor in the department of leukemia, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, is the guest of honor to provide a comprehensive and simplified overview of the major advances in chronic lymphocytic leukemia over the past two decades. Dr. Jain talks mutations and time to treatment, prognostic markers, BTK inhibitors, combination regimens, current research, toxicities, cost, and a host of controversies with trial comparator arms, drug similarities, and MRD. Check ...
May 30, 2023•1 hr 1 min
In this pivot episode, James Winterman, Vice President of Scientific Marketing at Caris Life Sciences, joins Chadi as a citizen of England to discuss and reflect on the passing of the late Queen Elizabeth II. He begins with a condensed history lesson of the United Kingdom, how the healthcare system differs slightly across the UK and how it compares to that of the US, and where government power rests. Then, he delves into the royal family and their position in all of this. What social and politic...
May 23, 2023•44 min
Stacie Dusetzina, PhD, Professor of Health Policy, Ingram Professor of Cancer Research, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, makes her long-awaited return to the show to cover all things related to pharmacy benefit managers. Stacie talks about the good, the bad, and the ugly, starting with the history of the PBMs and how they grew within the healthcare industry. What exactly is the role of the PBMs and why do they exist? Have they helped in reducing cost of care, and if not, why? Why are they h...
May 16, 2023•56 min
Tiffany McConathy, an oncology nurse practitioner in Arkansas, tells the sombering story of her infant daughter’s battle with pediatric brain and spinal cancer. She details Nora’s course of events, including the long pathology and diagnosis journey, the decision to move forward with treatment, and the months of good responses that followed prior to her passing. Tiffany also shares how Nora’s COVID-19 diagnosis during treatment pushed back her transplantation and eventual autopsy, just 9 days bef...
May 09, 2023•39 min
Kyle Kiser, CEO of Arrive Health, joins the show to highlight his company’s unique approach to lowering costs of prescription drugs for patients in the US. He explains how physicians often make changes to their prescription recommendations based on Arrive Health’s presence as an “invisible component within the EMR,” how they aggregate data to generate clinical alternatives and relevant alternatives to payer preferences, how they maneuver around prior authorizations, the need (or lack thereof) of...
May 02, 2023•42 min
Chadi hosts a duo of Canadiens to discuss quality of life and patient-reported outcomes in clinical trials: Christopher Booth, MD, and Michael Brundage, MSc, FRCPC, MD, both of Queen's University. They begin by pontificating on whether quality of life is a “must” endpoint in designing interventional clinical trials today, the timeline of how “PROs” came to be a term and an important component of clinical trials, how PRO measures should differ across disease types and trials, and how PROs should ...
Apr 25, 2023•1 hr 5 min
Mike Rucker, PhD, a behavioral scientist and organizational psychologist, joins the show to discuss his writing and publishing of the book “The Fun Habit: How the Pursuit of Joy and Wonder Can Change Your Life.” Dr. Rucker explains how you can build having fun into an “actionable and effortless habit” and simultaneously reduce burnout. He shares why Americans have a difficult time enjoying themselves outside of work, what it means to “stop chasing happiness and start having fun,” what kind of so...
Apr 18, 2023•51 min
How do you design clinical trials in the era of precision oncology? Are prospective randomized controlled trials necessary anymore? Drs. Ray Kurzrock, Vivek Subbiah, and Christopher Booth drop the gloves and debate these questions - beginning with the definition of “precision oncology,” what phase the trials should be when initially designing, and whether accelerated approval and surrogate endpoints are truly helping patients in the precision oncology era. The group also analyzes specific exampl...
Apr 11, 2023•1 hr 20 min
In a change-of-pace episode, Chadi has the tables turned on him as he is interviewed by two supporters and reviewers of his new book “Toxic Exposure: The True Story behind the Monsanto Trials and the Search for Justice.” Kelly Ryerson, MBA, GlyphosateGirl.com, and Mikkael Sekeres, author of “Drugs and the FDA: Safety, Efficacy, and the Public's Trust” and “When Blood Breaks Down: Life Lessons from Leukemia,” ask Chadi to comment on why he was chosen as an expert witness, how glyphosate causes ca...
Apr 04, 2023•56 min
In the latest book review, Chadi hosts the authors of the successful expose of his former colleague in “Taking On Big Pharma: Dr. Charles Bennett's Battle.” Julius Getman and Terri LeClercq share how they met Dr. Bennett on a cruise and became interested in his story about his massive achievements and legal charges against him - mishandling government grant money and violating the False Claims Act. They begin with their reasons for believing that the case against Dr. Bennett was baseless and unf...
Mar 28, 2023•51 min
A story about adverse reactions, the FDA, the FBI, and patients - Linda Martin, a healthcare executive, shares with Chadi a riveting dialogue about the events in her life that have transpired since she got sick and started taking a standard prescribed antibiotic. Linda tells the story of when and why she was prescribed the antibiotic, how it made her feel worse than before, and how she found similar stories of bad reactions to this drug online. Then, she explains the series of events that led to...
Mar 21, 2023•1 hr 2 min
To better understand the role and importance of Advanced Practice Providers in oncology care, Chadi hosts Sarah Wyman, MSN, ACNP-BC, and Katie Simon, MMSc, PA-C, both co-leads of the APPs on the inpatient malignant hematology services team at Emory University Winship Cancer Institute. They begin by explaining the similar training and skill sets of NPs and PAs, the history of these positions over the past 25 years, and the day-to-day responsibilities for inpatient APPs. Then, they share how disch...
Mar 14, 2023•52 min
In the world of whole-genome sequencing, do we really need cytogenetics anymore? To answer this question, Chadi brings on two cytogeneticists: Linda Baughn, PhD, and Yassmine Akkari, PhD. They begin by describing their unique career paths to becoming cytogeneticists, their day-to-day responsibilities, and what tests they perform and on what specimens. They then simplify the commonly used assays in their labs, how cytogenetic techniques are evolving (rather than dying), what whole genome sequenci...
Mar 07, 2023•58 min
Today is the day of the official launch of Chadi’s first book “Toxic Exposure: The True Story behind the Monsanto Trials and the Search for Justice.” Throughout the book, Chadi details his experience as an expert physician witness and the true story of the first three litigation trials against Monsanto and their herbicide "Roundup" which is linked to the development of Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. The special guest on this unique day is the amazing icon and legend Dr. Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Dr. Taleb i...
Feb 28, 2023•1 hr 10 min
In this special episode, Chadi hosts his previous mentor from his days as a fellow at Northwestern: Martin Tallman, MD, previous president of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) and world renowned leukemia expert. Together, they discuss mentorship and what makes a good mentor, where Dr. Tallman’s interest in leukemia came from and why he decided to begin his career in Seattle, his road to becoming an ASH president and how his day-to-day responsibilities changed after his election, reasons f...
Feb 21, 2023•49 min
Nathan Vardi, managing editor at MarketWatch, and author of the new book “For Blood and Money: Billionaires, Biotech, and the Quest for a Blockbuster Drug,” is the guest of honor on today’s show. Nathan divulges on what happened behind closed doors for the creation of BTK inhibitors. Everything at the intersection of Wall Street, investigators, doctors, regulatory agencies, investors, and VC is detailed. He begins by explaining the inspiration to cover this story and how willing individuals were...
Feb 14, 2023•59 min
Few drugs in oncology have transformed the way we take care of patients. Ibrutinib is one such drug, and it belongs to a class called "BTK inhibitors" In this episode, Chadi captures the story of developing the drug through the eyes of Dr. Jeff Sharman, a prolific investigator and researcher; he is the director of research at the Willamette Valley Cancer Institute as well as the medical director of hematology research for The US Oncology Network. Dr. Sharman begins by discussing the dynamics of ...
Feb 07, 2023•55 min
Jennifer Fried, MBA, most recently the CEO of ExplORer Surgical, joins the show to share her story as a co-founder of a successful startup health technology company. She begins by telling her inspiration to start the company with her partner, when and how operating room workflow and efficiency was discovered as an area of unmet need, the steps she took to create the software platform solution and how it functions, struggles she faced when facing potential investors, how the pandemic propelled th...
Jan 31, 2023•52 min
What do we know about various diets and their association with cancer? Have you ever wondered what the evidence shows? To answer this important question, Chadi hosts two specialists from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center: Urvi Shah, MD, hematologist oncologist (myeloma expert and a cancer survivor herself), and Neil Lyengar, MD, medical oncologist (breast cancer expert). They discuss whether there’s a direct cause-and-effect relationship between lack of exercise and cancer diagnoses and alc...
Jan 24, 2023•1 hr 8 min
Scott Eggener, MD, University of Chicago, and Jonathan Epstein, MD, The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, join the show to debate whether Gleason Score 6 prostate cancer should be renamed to non-cancer. The trio hit on what should happen upon diagnosis and Gleason grade 6, which patients should be offered active surveillance, the benefits and risks of not calling this diagnosis “cancer,” how often and how frequently to biopsy, overscreening, and many other discussion points. Read Dr. Eggener’s...
Jan 17, 2023•57 min
