Contributors

Brian Biles, MD, is a professor in the Department of Health Policy and the School of Public Health and Health Services at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Biles served for five years as the senior vice president of the Commonwealth Fund and for seven years as staff director of the Subcommittee on Health of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Michael Clark, MD, is an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.

Stan Deresinski, MD, is a clinical professor of medicine at Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA.

Allan Gibofsky, MD, is professor of medicine and public health at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University, professor of law at Fordham University, and an adjunct faculty member at Rockefeller University, all in New York City.

John T. Kissel, MD, is director of the Division of Neuromuscular Medicine and professor of neurology at Ohio State University Medical Center.

Philip J. Mease, MD, is the chief of rheumatology research at the Swedish Medical Center in Seattle and is clinical professor of medicine at the University of Washington. He was the guest editor of a special edition of Rheumatic Disease Clinics of North America that focused exclusively on fibromyalgia; it was published in May 2009.

Douglas A. Perednia, MD, has, has, at various times, been (and in some cases continues to be), a medical internist, dermatologist, professor of medical informatics, researcher for the National Institutes of Health, writer, entrepreneur, telemedicine expert, and tap dancer. He is the author of "Overhauling the Healthcare Machine: How the U.S. Can Save Over $500 Billion in Healthcare Costs Without Really Trying." Read his blog at http://roadtohellth.com/. He lives in Portland, OR.

Lance Peterson, MD, is director of the Microbiology and Infectious Disease Research Program at North Shore University Health System and a clinical professor at the University of Chicago.

Michael Rybak, PharmD, is a professor of pharmacy and medicine at Wayne State University in Detroit.

Peter Salgo, MD, is a professor of anesthesiology and internal medicine at Columbia University and surgical director of the ICU at New York Presbyterian Hospital. He is also an Emmy Award-winning medical journalist.

Stewart B. Segal, MD, is a board-certified family physician who has practiced in Lake Zurich, IL, for 27 years and is also a pioneer in open access medicine. He has served as an investigator in over 30 clinical trials. Read more of his medical musings at his blog, www.livewellthy.org.

Robert M. Wachter, MD, coined the term "hospitalist" in a 1996 New England Journal of Medicine article, and is past president of the Society of Hospital Medicine. He is generally considered the academic leader of the hospitalist movement, the fastest growing specialty in the history of modern medicine He is the author of is Wachter's World (http://community.the-hospitalist.org/blogs/) one of the nation’s most popular health care blogs. He is professor and associate chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, where he holds the nation’s first endowed chair in hospital medicine.