The Duke Digest - May 11, 2010

In Today's Issue:

  • Health Care Informatics: The Next Frontier in Health Care Reform
  • 2.7 Million Reasons Why We Don't Have Enough Primary Care Doctors
  • Duke Professor Appointed to President's Council of Economic Advisers
  • Duke Legal Experts Available to Comment on Supreme Court Nominee
  • Attempted Attack in New York Underlies Need for Sustainable Counter-Terrorism Efforts

HEALTH CARE INFORMATICS: THE NEXT FRONTIER IN HEALTH CARE REFORM
To help meet a federal mandate for digitization of all health records by 2014, at least 50,000 health-care informatics professionals are needed in the next few years. In response, Dr. Ed Hammond, a national expert in data standards and health informatics, came out of retirement last year to head the new Duke Center for Health Informatics.

The center, which brings together Duke’s Schools of Medicine and Nursing, the Pratt School of Engineering and the Fuqua School of Business, will train the next generation of doctors, nurses and health-care administrators in implementing and managing electronic medical record systems to improve patient care.

Duke’s programs will include a new Master of Management in Clinical Informatics degree, being offered for the first time this fall through Fuqua, as well as degrees from the certificate to the doctoral level. Hammond has won two stimulus grants under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act totaling just under $4 million to get the training program started.

Read More:
The Next Frontier in Health Care Reform (DukeNews)
Duke Center for Health Informatics Website (DCHI.duke.edu)

2.7 MILLION REASONS WHY WE DON'T HAVE ENOUGH PRIMARY CARE DOCTORS
Choosing primary care over a specialty career costs physicians an estimated $2.7 million in potential lifetime earnings and wealth, according to a Duke University analysis. The study looked at average lifetime income and wealth accumulation of specialist physicians, primary care physicians, physician assistants, MBAs and college graduates.

With 32 million more Americans about to be covered for primary care by the health care reforms, the current shortage of primary care providers may become more acute. Fixing the shortage could require policy changes to reduce this income gap, say the study's authors.

Read More:
2.7 Million Reasons Why We Don't Have Enough Primary Care Doctors (Fuqua.duke.edu)
Full Article: Can We Close the Income and Wealth Gap Between Specialists and Primary Care Physicians (Health Affairs.org)


DUKE PROFESSOR APPOINTED TO PRESIDENT'S COUNCIL OF ECONOMIC ADVISERS
Ronnie Chatterji, Assistant Professor of Strategy at The Fuqua School of Business, has been selected for a one-year appointment as a Senior Economist with President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers. The Council is charged with offering the President objective economic advice on the formulation of both domestic and international economic policy.

Read More:
Chatterji Appointed to President's Council of Economic Advisers (Fuqua.duke.edu)

DUKE LEGAL EXPERTS AVAILABLE FOR COMMENT ON SUPREME COURT NOMINEE
The following Duke University legal experts are available to comment on President Obama's nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court of the United States.

Neil Siegel is an expert in the areas of constitutional law and theory and the federal courts. He served as special counsel to Sen. Joseph R. Biden during the confirmation hearings of John G. Roberts and Samuel A. Alito. A former clerk to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, he also served as a Bristow Fellow in the Office of the Solicitor General at the United States Department of Justice. (919) 613-7157 or siegel@law.duke.edu.
 
Guy-Uriel Charles’ scholarship focuses on constitutional law, voting rights, election law, race and the law, campaign finance and redistricting. The founding director of Duke’s Center on Law, Race and Politics, he previously was a professor of law and the director of the Institute for Law & Politics, a senior fellow in law and politics at the Institute on Race and Poverty, and a law school faculty affiliate at the Center for the Study of Political Psychology at the University of Minnesota. He is the co-founder of the Colored Demos blog (http://www.coloreddemos.blogspot.com/). (919) 613-7191 or charles@law.duke.edu.
 
Lisa Kern Griffin is an expert in white collar crime, the role of the jury system, evidence and federal criminal justice policy. A former federal prosecutor, she clerked for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. (919) 613-7112 or griffin@law.duke.edu.


ATTEMPTED ATTACK IN NEW YORK UNDERLIES NEED FOR SUSTAINABLE COUNTER-TERRORISM EFFORTS
 The recent failed attempt to set off a car bomb in New York City’s Times Square “means that our vigorous counter-terrorism efforts will need to continue for the foreseeable future,” says David Schanzer, director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security at Duke and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“Defensive measures -- screening devices, surveillance cameras and the like -- will be of limited utility against an adaptive adversary, we should rigorously scrutinize these expenditures,” says Schanzer. “Ultimately, the hard work of prevention falls to intelligence collection and analysis, both at home and abroad, and societal vigilance. Schanzer also asserts that efforts to engage with domestic communities that can provide early warning of individuals who are radicalizing will be far more cost-effective than massive surveillance and detection networks.

Read More:
Attempted Attack in New York Underlise Need for Sustainable Counter-Terrorism Efforts (DukeNews)