UB to screen documentary on U.S. health care

UB, along with many universities throughout the country aiming to enter the national conversation on health care, will be screening the documentary “Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare” from 3-4:30 p.m. Sept. 17 in 100 Allen Hall, South Campus.

It is free and open to all members of the university community.

The event, which will begin at 2:30 p.m. with light refreshments, also will feature a panel discussion of health leadership after the film.

The panel will be moderated by Philip Glick, professor of surgery, School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. The panel participants are:

• Erin Campbell, MPH student and chief resident in preventive medicine
• Michael W. Cropp, president and CEO, Independent Health
• Karl D. Fiebelkorn associate dean of student affairs and professional relations in pharmacy practice, School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences
• Jeffery Grace, clinical director, Buffalo Psychiatric Center
• Camille P. Wicher, vice president for clinical operations, corporate ethics and research subject protections, Roswell Park Cancer Institute
• Gregory Young, associate commissioner of health for Western New York, New York State Department of Health

“This event brings together leaders from Western New York health care with UB faculty, students and community partners to engage in dialog and explore, in an interprofessional, collaborative and experiential manner, potential solutions to the challenges we face in achieving quality and equitable health care for all,” says Michael Cain, vice president for health sciences and dean of the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

The documentary addresses such current U.S. health care issues as:

• An entrenched system: Pharmaceutical companies, medical device manufacturers, hospitals and insurance companies all profit on declining health.
• Overmedication: U.S. health consumers spend roughly $300 billion annually on pharmaceutical drugs, nearly as much as the rest of world combined.
• Overtreatment: One of the hardest things for U.S. health consumers to understand is that more doesn’t necessarily mean better.
• Paying more, getting less: While the U.S. pays more, we often have worse health outcomes.
• Preventing disease: 75% of health care costs go toward treating diseases that are largely preventable.
• Reimbursement: The health care system often uses a fee-for-service model of payment.
• Treating the whole person: Your body isn’t a car, but that’s how it’s treated when you take it to the doctor’s office—fixing broken parts one by one

For those who want to submit questions for the panel discussion in advance of the event, questions can be submitted through the School of Public Health and Health Professions’ Facebook page or its Twitter feed, using hashtags #escapefire or #escapefireub.

The afternoon’s events are sponsored by the UB Office of Interprofessional Education, the School of Public Health and Health Professions’ Office of Public Health Practice, the School of Management, the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, the AMA Medical Student Section and Physicians for Human Rights.