NAMDRC will host its Annual Educational Conference at the Scottsdale Resort at McCormick Ranch in Scottsdale, Arizona, March 12-14, 2020, and features a wide cross section of clinical, management, and health policy issues.
The NAMDRC Educational Conference is unlike other medical conferences you have attended. Conference sessions begin early each day and conclude by 12:30 so attendees, spouses, and guests can enjoy the venue, this year in Scottsdale, Arizona. All registrants and their guests enjoy numerous complimentary meals, and speakers and corporate partners invariably linger with the attendees during receptions for those more casual opportunities for conversations and less formal Q&A.
The Program Committee has announced its plans to focus the first day of the 3-day event on lung cancer, severe asthma, and pulmonary hypertension. Speakers include Maxwell Smith, MD from the Mayo Clinic, Arizona; James Herman, MD, Co-Director of the Lung Cancer Program at UPMC, and Colleen Channick, MD, FCCP, Director of Interventional Pulmonary at UCLA Medical Center to address timely updates on lung cancer diagnosis and treatment. The morning sessions also include a presentation on severe asthma by Monica Kraft, MD, FCCP, University of Arizona; and Richard Channick, MD, Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA, examining pulmonary hypertension with a concentration on current approaches to diagnosis and treatment.
On Friday, March 13, the focus shifts from the clinical to the changing landscape in the delivery of medicine, with a concentrated focus on innovation and new tools available to guide physicians in treatment of their patients. Claibe Yarbrough, MD, National Program Director of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep at the VA, University of Texas, will examine the growth of telemedicine in the ICU. Steve Peters, MD, FCCP, a past President of NAMDRC and a current Board member, will look at artificial intelligence and the future of medicine. Dr. Peters will also present a practice management update in partnership with Alan Plummer, MD, FCCP, as he addresses coding changes in the practice of pulmonary, critical care, and sleep medicine effective 2020-21.
Shifting back to a clinical focus, the Walter J. O’Donohue memorial lecture will be given by Gerald Criner, MD, FCCP, Temple University, to examine endobronchial valve therapy for emphysema. Rounding out the presentations will be luncheon speaker Susan Tanski, MD, looking at electronic nicotine delivery systems.
On Saturday, the topics turn to sleep and mechanical ventilation. Insomnia is the subject matter for Jennifer Martin, MD, Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA; Sairam Parthasarathy, MD, at the University of Arizona, will address sleep and noninvasive mechanical ventilation. And, in a corollary presentation, home mechanical ventilation is the topic for John Hansen-Flaschen, MD, FCCP, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.
The final morning rounds out with controversies in septic shock, Rodrigo Cartin-Ceba, MD, at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, and palliative care in the ICU, Mark Edwin, also from the Mayo Clinic.
For more information about membership in NAMDRC and conference information, visit its website at www.namdrc.org.