LSU Forum Examines Health-Care Disparities and Acce...( BATON ROUGE La. Jan. 9 -- The 11...),Health

BATON ROUGE, La., Jan. 9 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The 11th annual LSU Health Care Services Division (HCSD) Health Care Effectiveness Forum, entitled "Eliminating Disparities and Improving Access to Relationship-Centered Care," will be January 15, 2008, at the Holiday Inn Select, 4728 Constitution Avenue, Baton Rouge, La., from 9 AM to 5 PM.

LSU HCSD is redesigning patient-care delivery and improving access to its systems of care. Conference presenters will show how redesign and improvement result in better clinical outcomes, will examine concepts and examples of health-care quality, and will evaluate LSU HCSD progress in health care over the past decade.

"Our implementation and improvement of our disease management programs during the past ten years have given us patient outcomes that match or surpass many others nationwide," said Dr. Michael Butler, acting LSU HCSD CEO.

Dr. Butler will present an overview of the next steps LSU HCSD will make to improve health care and access, including the emerging concept of medical homes. Dr. Daniel Duffy, senior advisor to the president of the American Board of Internal Medicine, will discuss relationship-centered care and the practice of traditional medicine, dispelling the notion that physicians need to be compassionate yet remain detached in the practice of medicine.

Dr. Paul Haidet, associate professor of medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine, will discuss patient-clinician communication and important care processes, such as information sharing and decision-making. Good communication results in fewer medical errors, less litigation, and favorable social, psychological, and biological outcomes.

Dr. Lisa Newman, associate professor of surgery and director of Breast Care Center of the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center, will discuss survival in African-American and white American breast-cancer patients and clinical issues surrounding ethnicity and socioe
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