Podcasts
Blog
Contact Us
By James D. Huysman, PsyD, LCSW, CFT
WellMed Chief Compassion Officer
“Take care of the patient and everything will follow,” said Dr. Thomas Frist. This premise has always been a touchstone of the WellMed brand. In keeping with that tradition, WellMed is now are planning to spread the educational word to everyone within our organization. No doubt, such an outreach effort will help our tireless caregivers as well.
Due to the great success of the WellMed Charitable Foundation’s Caregiver TeleConnection, and a new role I have as Chief Compassion Officer, I am happy to announce that the newest member of the WellMed family, Patient Teleconnection will be available to access within the next 30 days!
I am honored and excited to be given the role of facilitating this new platform. My goal is to bring the “Take Your Oxygen First” message and any informative content to our patients and your loved ones in these uncertain and unsettling times.
Patient TeleConnection will offer a weekly dose of energy, oxygen, and inspiration for our patient’s wellbeing. Each week we will explore a patient-focused theme to build and enhance resilience and peace of mind together. As the program continues, we will be able to explore and target specific issues and conditions that affect the quality of our lives. As our patient population is empowered, it is my fondest hope that the load you carry as caregivers will be lessened, even a little. As a byproduct of moving forward with this project is that it may serve to open wider lines of communication between you and your loved one where that is possible.
Please know that my passionate advocacy and work on your behalf will never wane. I will always make myself available for Caregiver TeleConnection when asked and I will continue to share with you here in Caregiver SOS each month. Make sure you send me all your suggestions so I can develop weekly “Doses of O2” based upon what you see as caregivers. You can be our Executive Producers in our new outreach effort.
Send your suggestions to tyof@wellmed.net and I will be sure to read them. By the way, TYOF should always be your mantra as well. Take Your Oxygen First!
Information is power and you are the best ambassadors we could have to spread the word about Patient Teleconnection to your loved ones, friends, and colleagues. We will do our part too.
James D. (Dr. Jamie) Huysman, PsyD, LCSW, CFT, Chief Compassion Officer, Project Omega – Social entrepreneurship, advocacy, and innovation have been the touchstones and driving force throughout Dr. Jamie’s 40-year career encompassing both for-profit and nonprofit leadership roles. In the 1980s he undertook the advocacy, outreach, and clinical programming for addiction and dual diagnosis treatment facilities and developed his long standing private practice. The next decade found him serving as the clinical innovator for the major Talk, Court, and Reality television shows of the day. Seeing the need to advocate for guest’s rights, he designed and developed TV AfterCare®, the first national program dedicated to the clinical and corrective follow-up support for guests of the talk/court and reality genre, which remains active today. Dr. Jamie had hundreds of television and radio appearances and cohosted Walgreen’s Health Corner with media personalities Leeza Gibbons and subsequently Joan Lunden. In 2002, while working on her show, he partnered with Ms. Gibbons, co-founding and creating the programming for The Leeza Gibbons Memory Foundation, a formal network of national locations, providing direct services to family caregivers around the US. There he administratively and clinically supervised a trained staff dedicated to supporting the family caregivers of loved ones with memory disorders. Together with Rosemary DeAngelis Laird, MD, he and Gibbons co-wrote the bestselling Take Your Oxygen First: Protecting Your Health and Happiness While Caring for a Loved One with Memory Loss. It was during this time that “Dr. Jamie” became certified as a Compassion Fatigue Therapist and became a much sought-after keynote speaker and session presenter at numerous caregiving, senior, and aging conferences all over North America. He left the LGMF in 2010 and went to work for WellMed Medical Management as Vice President of Provider Relations and Government Affairs. Now, as newly appointed Chief Compassion Officer, he brings his special brand of connective magic to the Patient Teleconnection platform. Through this new national outreach effort and in behalf of the WellMed Charitable Foundation he continues his advocacy efforts to educate empower and energize medical patients within all healthcare systems today as well as the general public nationwide.