Alumni Spotlight:
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Alumni Spotlight:
Dr. Richard Seidman
COLLEGE OF MEDICINE
Dr. Richard Seidman is Chief Medical Officer at L. A. Care Health Plan. He is responsible for developing and implementing strategies and initiatives to ensure quality health care delivery to the more than two million members – some of the most vulnerable in the county. Dr. Seidman oversees the medical leadership of the organization and focuses on enhancing access and the quality of care provided through contracted plans and providers. He earned his graduate degrees( MD, M. P. H.) at the Charles R. Drew University / UCLA School of Medicine and the UCLA School of Public Health.
Dr. Seidman, what attracted you to the CDU / UCLA program?
When I was applying to medical school, I was interested in social justice. I wanted to work with underserved communities. I was interested in public health and preventive medicine. I was looking at programs that I thought would make a good fit and Drew was a pretty new program at that time. The goals of the program were aligned with my personal goals, so I applied. This was 1982-83. I was in the second or third graduating class.
Did you have a particular interest in working with medically underserved patients?
During my course work in college I took a seminar in social justice and social change. I was also president of my youth group at my temple. We learned about social justice and communities with many types people that have been discriminated against. It seemed like a good fit to me to rather than working in higher income communities that already had good access to care. I was more interested in working in communities that needed more help. I sort of found my calling that way.
Do you think there ' s a particular mindset that is needed to effectively work with underserved patients?
Without a doubt. I think not everybody feels a calling to work in underserved communities to address health equity issues to reduce disparities. One of the great things that Drew does is to attract like-minded people interested in serving the patient population in the community. With any mission-driven organization, you have to have a calling to the mission or else it doesn ' t fill the soul. At Drew, what ' s good is that you ' re exposed to new approaches to medical treatment and a unique style of working with patients while in the in the program.
What approach stands out in your mind from that experience?
One of the things that really sticks in my mind from my training were some of the community site visits we did with the attending physicians. I ' ll never forget a trip we took with Dr. Ernie Smith. We rode around to some of the community sites. If you think about what was going on in the community at that time: HIV was still a new epidemic and people were routinely dying of HIV and hepatitis B. And PCP was the drug of choice community. We were riding around town with Ernie Smith taking us to homeless shelters with guys wasting away with HIV.
Were you exposed to any new medical approaches on these occasions?
I observed a unique style of working with patients because when we were exposed to the community we were certainly being educated about the realities of what was going on which made us that much more able to understand what our patients were dealing with when we were trying to take care of them in the hospital setting.
Quality improvement is such an important element in any business that works so intimately with clients. How has your team brought innovation to quality improvement in health care? How does that quality improvement help the medical profession?
My team developed L. A. Cares ' Physician P4P program almost 10 years ago. Today everybody ' s talking about value based pay. There was plenty of talk about it back then; but, then, it was a newer concept. The P4P payment program creates the business case for physicians to invest in quality improvement efforts that drive better patient outcomes, and reward physicians financially for better performance. Since 2012, P4P has generated $ 20,000,000 a year to physicians throughout Los Angeles County serving L. A. Care members. We have demonstrated improved, measured performance over that time. There ' s no money at risk in the payment to physicians. It ' s only a bonus on top and if anything, can represent as much as 10 percent or more of their base cap.
Speaking of resources, you ' ve been doing some vital program funding at CDU over the years. What have you helped create most recently?
We ' ve been very active in funding medical student scholarships and the recent medical residency programs. Funding the medical student scholarship program was my idea, as an extension to elevating the safety net program we started with employer subsidy, and loan repayment programs. I ' m super proud of that and just thrilled to be able to do my part to direct some financial support to the University.