can he read and think?

 

and does he know that the patient in The Lancet p.106 Jan. 14, 1978 was Mrs. J Edward Spike Jr, that the operation took place in Boston and that the patient's personal physician was Mark Altschule of Harvard? Certainly the ability to treat the cause of idiopathic pain is quite valuable.

 

We will contact him and inquire and report back.

 

He might also be asked why he has not helped see that BCG is easily and widely available in the US. Perhaps he is not familiar with the work of Dr. Denise L Faustman. See faustmanlab.org and pubmed.org faustman dl.

 

Samuel R. Nussbaum, M.D.

	Samuel R. Nussbaum, M.D. Executive Vice President, Clinical Health Policy; Chief Medical Officer
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Dr. Samuel Nussbaum is Executive Vice President, Clinical Health Policy, and Chief Medical Officer for WellPoint, Inc. He is the key spokesperson and policy advocate for WellPoint and is responsible for the company’s public health policy programs. He oversees corporate medical and pharmacy policy and clinical quality programs to ensure the provision of proven effective care. Dr. Nussbaum collaborates with industry leaders, physicians, hospitals and national policy and health care organizations to shape an agenda for quality, safety and clinical outcomes and to improve patient care for WellPoint’s 36 million medical members nationwide. In addition, Dr. Nussbaum works closely with WellPoint business units to advance innovative health care services strategies.

 

In the decade that Dr. Nussbaum has served as Chief Medical Officer at WellPoint, he has led business units focused on care and disease management and health improvement, and provider networks and contracting with accountability for over $100B in health care expenditures. He has been the architect of models that improve quality, safety and affordability. Nussbaum was instrumental in developing innovative contracting approaches linking hospital reimbursement to quality, safety and clinical performance, for patient-centered medical homes and for accountable care organizations. In addition, he guided an extensive set of public and private sector partnerships which have improved community health. Under his leadership, WellPoint’s HealthCore subsidiary has built partnerships with Federal agencies, including the CDC and FDA, and with academic institutions to advance drug safety, comparative effectiveness and outcomes research. 

 

Dr. Nussbaum currently serves on the Boards of the National Quality Forum (NQF), the OASIS Institute, NEHI, and BioCrossroads, an Indiana-based public-private collaboration that advances and invests in the life sciences, and has participated in numerous Institute of Medicine activities, including serving on the Roundtable on Value & Science-Driven Health Care. Dr. Nussbaum is a Professor of Clinical Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine and serves as adjunct professor at the Olin School of Business, Washington University.

 

Dr. Nussbaum has served as President of the Disease Management Association of America, Chairman of the National Committee for Quality Health Care, as Chair of America's Health Insurance Plan's (AHIP) Chief Medical Officer Leadership Council, as a member of the AHIP Board, and on the Secretary of Health and Human Services’ Advisory Committee on Genetics, Health, and Society. Dr. Nussbaum received the 2004 Physician Executive Award of Excellence from the American College of Physician Executives and Modern Physician magazine and has been recognized by Modern Healthcare as one of the “50 Most Influential Physician Executives in Healthcare” in 2010 and 2011. 

 

Prior to joining WellPoint, Dr. Nussbaum served as executive vice president, Medical Affairs and System Integration, of BJC Health Care, where he led integrated clinical services across the health system and served as President of its medical group. He earned his medical degree from Mount Sinai School of Medicine. He trained in internal medicine at Stanford University Medical Center and Massachusetts General Hospital and in endocrinology and metabolism at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, where he directed the Endocrine Clinical Group. As a professor at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Nussbaum’s research led to new therapies to treat skeletal disorders and new technologies to measure hormones in blood.