Robin Cole, MD
OCMA member since 2007

David Keschner, MD, JD
OCMA member since 2000

K. Kevin Khajavi, MD
OCMA member since 2007

Robert McCoy, MD
OCMA member since 1992

Drs. Cole, Keschner, Khajavi and McCoy performed free surgeries at St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton as part of the late October and early November Super Surgery Days. The hospital co-sponsors the program with AccessOC, a nonprofit organization that aims to provide medical assistance to uninsured Orange County residents.

"The last surgery day was Nov. 3 at St. Jude in Fullerton, and we had a total of nine surgeries done," says Daniela Conde, program coordinator for AccessOC's surgery program. The first of these events took place in May 2007 at Kaiser Permanente Sand Canyon in Irvine, and Kaiser will also host the event again in April, she says.

Super Surgery Days depends largely on the participation of volunteer doctors and medical staff, as well as access to hospital facilities and community clinics. "They're all volunteers," Conde says. "In addition to Saturdays, the surgeons specifically donate their time to see these patients for their pre-op and post-op visits as well."

Modeled after the San Francisco-area Operation Access, Super Surgery Days has helped 17 uninsured patients to get elective, low-risk outpatient surgeries so far. Patients must have incomes below 250 percent of the federal poverty level and be ineligible for publicly funded programs, such as Medi-Cal. "Our program is for patients who need low-risk outpatient surgery, so there were cases where some patients didn't qualify, because the surgery wasn't going to be low-risk or outpatient," Conde says.

Compared with its Northern California counterpart, which claims 226 volunteer surgeons and anesthesiologists, and 21 participating hospitals and specialty facilities, Super Surgery Days is a recent upstart. "We had about five surgeons participate at St. Jude, and we had four at Kaiser," Conde says. About 15 anesthesiologists took part in each event, she adds.

Suvesh Chandiok, MD
RCMA member since 1994

Dr. Chandiok received the fifth annual Roger W. Ridley Healthcare Professional Award at the Riverside Community Health Foundation's "Diabetes Is the Silent California Ogre" event in September.

A specialist in endocrinology and tireless advocate for diabetics, Dr. Chandiok has been associated with Riverside Medical Clinic since 1991. He is currently medical director of quality/risk management at the clinic and heads the Diabetes Core program. He is also an associate clinical professor at UC Riverside, director of the diabetes clinic at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center, and chairman of the Riverside Medical Foundation. Dr. Chandiok is a fellow of the American College of Endocrinology.

The Roger W. Ridley Healthcare Professional Award was established in 2003 in memory of Dr. Ridley, founder of Riverside Community Health Foundation. Dr. Ridley gave back to his community and profession for the 47 years he practiced medicine as an anesthesiologist in Riverside.

Thomas LaGrelius, MD
LACMA member since 1975

A Torrance-based concierge physician, Thomas LaGrelius, MD, be-came president of the Society for Innovative Medical Practice Design following the organization's Dec. 2-4 annual meeting in Arlington, Va.

Formerly known as the American Society of Concierge Physicians, SIMPD aims to support physicians in concierge practices, cash practices, and other practices that steer clear of third-party payers. "We're an association of physicians with direct practices, who have professional and financial direct relationships with our patients," Dr. LaGrelius says. "It's a national organization of a couple hundred people, although there are probably 1,000 potential members who are doing what we're doing. We're trying to get everybody to join."

A young organization based in Reston, Va., SIMPD has held three annual meetings to date and will hold its 2008 annual meeting May 4-6 in Las Vegas at The Venetian. The group's Web site is www.simpd.org.

According to a statement, the nonprofit group encourages direct financial relationships in medical practices to promote the integrity of the patient-physician bond, without the involvement of insurance companies or government agencies. It also provides a forum for like-minded physicians to share ideas, works to influence legislation and regulation, organizes seminars and other educational events, and offers model forms, guidelines and best-practices documents.

Asked what direction he planned to take SIMPD during his tenure, Dr. LaGrelius answers that he hopes to keep it on essentially the same track as his predecessor, Chris Erwin, MD, who focused on expanding the organization and offering services to help improve members' practices.