My guest, Dr. Ella Faktorovich, spoke of vision health as it relates to different stages of life. We discussed issues such as myopia, computer vision syndrome, presbyopia, cataracts, glaucoma, macular degeneration and how to keep your eyes healthy.
Dr. Faktorovich is the Director and Founder of Pacific Vision Institute in San Francisco. She received her MD at UCSF Medical School, and competed her Ophthalmology at UCSF Department of Ophthalmology, followed by a two-year fellowship in Refractive and Corneal Surgery at UCLA Jules Stein Eye Institute. Dr. Faktorovich is the founder and remains the Chair of the Annual San Francisco Cataract, Cornea, and Refractive Surgery Symposium dedicated to continuing education of the Bay Area eye doctors in refractive surgery and other aspects of advanced patient eye care. Since its inception in 2001, more than 100 nationally renowned specialists have taught at the Symposium.
Our mental health care system is broken, and has been for a long time. There aren’t enough psychiatric hospital beds, or psychiatrists, or therapists, or safe out patient facilities, or good follow up care, or housing, or retraining programs for people with mental illness who are leaving prison. Care often isn’t coordinated, and so many mentally ill people wind up on the streets or in prison. There are about 113,000 people in California at any time who are homeless, and about 25% of the homeless adults studied in Los Angeles County suffer from a severe mental illness.
Please be aware that severe mental illness and suicide will be mentioned during this show, so if that might be triggering for you, you may want to skip this episode. For anyone who is needing help, please know that you can call the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988. It’s available 24 hours a day, and it’s free and confidential support for people in distress–that’s 988.
Guest:
Alice Feller is a clinical psychiatrist with a subspecialty in the treatment of substance use disorder. Many of her patients suffer from severe mental illness, and often live on the streets or behind bars. She has worked in hospital emergency rooms, psychiatric wards, outpatient clinics, chemical dependency treatment programs and in private practice. Her approach includes psychotherapy tailored to the needs of the patient and medication where appropriate. She has taught classes on the treatment of substance use disorder and consulted to the California Medical Board on physicians impaired by chemical dependence. She served two terms on the Berkeley Homeless Commission. For the past two years she has been a member of FASMI (Family Advocates for Severe Mental Illness), an advocacy group campaigning for changes in the law and better mental health care. Her recently published book is “American Madness” Fighting for Patients in a broken mental health system. She lives in Berkeley with her husband and daughter.
We will discuss the transformative power of generative AI and how patients and doctors might be able to reclaim control of American medicine with improved patient outcomes and healthcare that is more accessible and affordable.
Will hospitals and staff be ready for this “medical miracle?” And are patients ready to trust something they don’t understand and that hasn’t been tested enough?
Call in at 1-800-958-9008 with your questions, concerns, and curiosity about the future of medical care with AI, doctors, and other health professionals, collaborating with you for better health.
Pearl, named one of Modern Healthcare’s 50 most influential physician leaders, serves as a clinical professor of plastic surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine and is on the faculty of the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Dr. Pearl received his medical degree from the Yale University School of Medicine and completed his residency at Stanford University. Connect with Dr. Robert Pearl on Twitter @RobertPearlMD, LinkedIn and at his website robertpearlmd.com.
