Ingram’s February 2023

Professional Services

DIVINE CHI Olathe Health Pharmacy is not a matter of fol lowing a recipe to produce a pre scribed compound; a fair amount of detective work can be involved. In that sense, Divine Chi just might be Olathe Health’s Columbo. Consider the case of a patient with an extre- mely rare hematologic malignancy. “This medication was very new to the market; in fact, it was so new it had

MICHAEL NASSIF Saint Luke’s Health System

Michael Nassif can tell you about how things change and, in doing so, can come full circle. Take his starting point in health care back in central Iowa, where his father was a pediat ric pulmonologist who saw patients at clinics, in their homes, and in the hospital. That was an era when the house-call tradition was fading away,

yet to be recognized by most electronic medical record systems or insurance payers,” Chi recalls. “Furthermore, it had unusual tox icities that made treatment quite risky. Yet, this patient needed treatment as soon as possible due to the aggressive nature of the malignancy.” Successful treatment, he says, required a great deal of both research and collaboration with providers, nurses, the IT de partment, and even the pharmaceutical company. “Things can be frustratingly slow and complex in health care,” Chi says, “but this was an instance where everyone did their part, and we all worked like a well-oiled machine to treat this patient. Anytime I have a bad day at work, I think about that experience, and it reminds me of why I do what I do.” He began doing that at Olathe Health as a resident in 2014-15, then came on board as an oncology pharma cist in 2017. Chi is a native of the west-central African country of Cameroon, where he experienced the challenges of limited health infrastructure from a very young age. “When I immigrated to the United States around age 12, I ended up in a diaspora full of various health professionals with similar backgrounds to mine,” he says. “I naturally ended up pursuing health-care as a career because of all this. ... I wanted to do something in health care that made a big difference,” Chi says. Making a home and career in Kansas City means he can take advantage of the low cost of living and limited distractions,” Chi says. “It also has good schools. These qualities attracted my parents here, which is how I ended up in the area.”

but Nassif never forgot the quality of relationships his father was able to build, getting to know patients, their parents, spouses— even their birthdays. The long journey through his own medical career—he’s a cardiologist by training—came back to that quality of care with his efforts to help Saint Luke’s Health System estab lish Hospital in Your Home, an innovative program that delivers hospital-level care to patients in the comfort of their own homes. The first of its kind in this region, it combines high-quality, hands on care with an around-the-clock, virtual-care platform. “A hundred years ago,” Nassif says, “the hospital-in-your-home was the predom inant way. Now here we are in 2023, with our technology, turning the clock around and once again putting the patient in the hospi tal in their own home.” One benefit of the program is the reduced states of delirium and confusion in patients, especially the elderly, whose routines can be upset with hospital admissions. “The sin gle most amazing statistic,” Nassif says, “is that out of 240 patients to date, we’ve had zero who have become delirious or confused. They heal better, and we’ve cut the rate of those having to go back to a nursing home or acute rehab from 15 percent to less than 1 percent.” One case, in particular, he cites involved a woman who had been hospitalized three times in each of the past three years. Getting her into the Hospital in Your Home Program allowed var ious provider silos to come together in new ways, adjust her heart and kidney medications, and even diet to begin restoring her health.

ROGER DE LA TORRE Menorah Medical Center It’s almost hard to tell with Roger de la Torre: Is he a bariatric surgeon who also invents medical devices, or is he an inventor who specializes in bariatric surgery? Right now, we’re betting on the former—after all, even de la Torre isn’t sure just how many patents he’s earned in his career. “The highest number I’ve heard is 74,” says the Menorah Medical Center based physician. “A lot of those patents were licensed or sold to various companies, like Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic and Intuitive, the robotics company.” That success from the inventor’s bench has allowed de la Torre to extend his reach to patients worldwide. “That’s what I find to be the most rewarding thing about the whole experience,” he says. “One that I might like the most, not that you can like one more than another, but the one I think was very impactful is a product for using your hand in laparoscopic surgery. After that came out, more people have been willing to donate a kidney to a family member or friend because the incision was going to be very small, you don’t have to be in the hospital as long, and can return to your activities sooner.” Born in Havana to parents who

were both lawyers, de la Torre spent most of his youth in Indiana, then went to Notre Dame expecting to follow their lead before switching gears late in that process. He gravitated to surgical disciplines, but it would be a natural evolution: “I’ve always enjoyed fixing things, taking things apart and putting them back together again,” he says. Sometimes the needed tools were immediately available, sometimes not—which meant fabricating solutions, planting the seeds for his interest in new devices. He’s also helped develop new procedures that have dramatically changed outcomes. Working with partner Steve Scott on a minimally-invasive surgical technique, “we realized that a surgery that we were doing to treat morbid obesity actually reversed Type II diabetes—and not 10 or 20 percent of cases, but roughly 85 percent of the time,” he says. “For the first time, you could be diagnosed with type II, and it wasn’t a lifelong disease that may end up one day taking your sight, your kidneys, or your legs. It could be reversed in most cases. Our unique method became the most popular way of doing that surgery for something that at one time was considered uncurable.”

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February 2023

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