Who’s Kamala Harris? Who’s Peter Pisters?

Who’s Kamala Harris? Who’s Peter Pisters?

By

Leonard Zwelling

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/20/opinion/harris-biden-trump-vance.html?searchResultPosition=1

There have been a number of articles of late about the need for Vice President Harris to reintroduce herself and define herself for the American people. The convention was a start, but only a start. What does she stand for? What are her specific policies? The piece from The New York Times on August 21 by Kristen Soltis Anderson is just the latest one to urge Ms. Harris to reveal more.

In essence, Ms. Harris has to paint a picture of herself and her aspirations for the country that both builds on her work in the Biden Administration and separates her from it. It’s tricky. We will see if she can convince more than the majority of the American people that she can both preserve the good and create the better. She will need to reach a super-majority because Democrats cannot win the Electoral College vote without a wide popular majority (see 2016 and 2020).

Peter Pisters has been president of MD Anderson since December 1, 2017 according to co-Pilot the Microsoft generative AI search engine.

So, I asked co-Pilot, what Dr. Pisters’ plans were for the future of MD Anderson. Here’s what it said:

Patient-centered care: Reduction in wait times and increased patient satisfaction scores

Research and innovation: Increase research funding and publications

Education and Training: Increase the number of fellows and add educational courses

Community Engagement: increase community awareness in prevention and increase cancer screening rates

Operational excellence: reducing costs and promote green initiatives

It seems to me that these are real plans, but the question is does the faculty and staff know the plans or does Dr. Pisters, like Ms. Harris, need to reintroduce himself and his plans for the institution? Should he give a progress report?

I say this because my sources are describing burnout as a significant problem among the faculty and clinical loads increasing along with physician-based increases in bureaucracy (e.g., more chart work-thanks EPIC).

So given the above, here are a couple of questions for Dr. Pisters to answer.

Have wait times decreased and are patients more satisfied? I can answer for myself as a patient that both are better than ever, but is this uniformly true?

I want to know if peer-reviewed research funding has increased. I also want to know about the quality of the publications from Anderson faculty and the percent that had to be retracted.

I want to know if the Anderson trainees of yesterday are the leaders of tomorrow. What percentage of Anderson trainees stay in academic medicine and what percent become professors and academic leaders?

Are more Houstonians screened for cancer at Anderson now than were five years ago?

Finally, have clinical costs dropped? What’s the marginal cost of seeing the next new patient? Is patient care profitable in all areas?

I think an hour presentation from the president to the faculty addressing these specific questions with real data would go a long way towards reintroducing Dr. Pisters to the institution and justifying his continued service.