Insight_2nd Edition

Jeffrey S. Borer, MD Professor of Medicine, SUNY Downstate Medical Center, School of Public Health at University Hospital of Brooklyn New York, NY www.borer4heart.com Striving for the betterment of his country through service in the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for nearly a decade, Dr. Borer molded his career in academic medicine through positions with the NIH and New York-Presbyterian/ Weill Cornell Medical Center/Weill Cornell Medicine. “Most people think that the work of a doctor is to evaluate patients and provide care, and it is,” he states, adding, “but for someone in academic medicine, there are actually three foci: patient care, teaching future doctors, and research, which is the creation of new knowledge to improve future care.” Remaining active at Weill Cornell Medicine as an adjunct professor of cardiovascular medicine in cardiothoracic surgery, Dr. Borer continues to relay his knowledge to up-and-coming medical professionals through his five professorships at the SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University, prolific contributions to medical literature, and lectures and seminars throughout the world. How have you navigated disruptions in your industry to remain a top professional? The changes haven’t been sudden, they have been gradual – the rise of third party payers, the increase in government encroachment on physician activity, etc. – all of those things have been slow and progres- sive. The fundamentals don’t change a lot. You need to find out what is wrong with patients. To do this optimally, you need to apply the scientific method to an individual person. That doesn’t change. What may change is how you get paid, whether you get paid, whether you can select the management strat- egy you want or cannot because the patient won’t be able to pay for it, or the hospital will lose money if you do it. Those are problems, but you figure out