PMD Institute Fall Summit
November 13, 2021. Virtual Conference.
0800 to 1230 EST
Saturday: November 13, 2021
08:00 AM – 08:05 AM EST
Opening Statements
Kayur Patel, MD, FACP, FACPE, FACHE, FACEP
08:05 AM – 08:35 AM EST
Slow Aging and Delay Chronic Disease (Part I)
William Bestermann, MD
(0.5 CME)
Optimal Medical Therapy (OMT) for cardiovascular and related conditions is a comprehensive set of integrated evidence-based care processes consistent with best practices
08:40 AM – 09:10 AM EST
Low Back Pain
Philip Eskew, DO, JD, MBA
(0.5 CME)
At the end of this presentation, participants will be able to:
- Better determine the source of low back pain
- Better advise the patient about the likely course of recovery
- Avoid unhelpful treatments that will not improve low back pain
09:15 AM – 09:45 AM EST
Slow Aging and Delay Chronic Disease (Part II)
William Bestermann, MD
(0.5 CME)
Optimal Medical Therapy (OMT) for cardiovascular and related conditions is a comprehensive set of integrated evidence-based care processes consistent with best practices
09:50 AM – 10:20 AM EST
COVID Testing – Facts and Fiction (Part I)
Deniece Krebs, CHC
(0.5 CME)
At the end of this presentation, participants will be able to:
- Discover the “rest of the story” about COVID testing
- Identify various types of testing where COVID-19 is concerned
- Evaluate what our patients know and what they should know when understanding their COVID tests and results
- Understand options for COVID testing – what is available today and maybe in the future
10:20 AM – 10:30 PM EST
Break
10:30 AM – 11:00 AM EST
COVID Testing – Facts and Fiction (Part II)
Deniece Krebs, CHC
(0.5 CME)
At the end of this presentation, participants will be able to:
- Discover the “rest of the story” about COVID testing
- Identify various types of testing where COVID-19 is concerned
- Evaluate what our patients know and what they should know when understanding their COVID tests and results
- Understand options for COVID testing – what is available today and maybe in the future
11:00 AM – 11:30 AM EST
LeadNow: Our Culture
Kayur Patel, MD, FACP, FACPE, FACHE, FACEP
Saria Saccocio, MD, MHA
(0.5 CME)
For years we have focused on standard of care that is what we have been taught from medical school to residency to clinical practice. This has been the wrong focus for years we have never focused on what really matters.
Collectively we need to lead the entire healthcare industry’s energy from managing numbers to managing the pathophysiology.
How can we restructure our thinking to treat the root cause and the pathophysiology at grass roots and remove our focus from managing better numbers for our diabetics, our hypertensive and for hyperlipidemia?
As these numbers reach its norm as clinicians there is an innate desire to stop our management however this is the very thing that is wrong with the current system. This is when we need to ack this is the right time to evaluate the root cause of the disease and manage it at that level.
11:30 AM – 12:30 AM EST
Simple UTI’s are not Complicated
Louis Strauss, MD
(1.0 CME)
Learning Objectives:
- Differentiate between simple and complicated UTIs
- Learn how to analyze components of the POX urinalysis
- Choosing appropriate antibiotics therapy
- Discussion of when to refer to the ED
12:30 PM EST
Adjourned
Speakers

Kayur Patel, MD, FACP, FACPE, FACHE, FACEP
Chief Medical Officer
Proactive MD
Dr. Kayur Patel, is a Practicing Emergency Department Physician. He is trained and boarded in both Emergency Medicine and Internal Medicine. Dr. Patel is also a highly experienced physician executive. He has over twenty years of practical experience in Healthcare management.
This includes serving as the;
- Former Chief Medical Officer of a 278-bed Community Hospital in Terre Haute
- Former Director to Health Care Excel, An Quality Improvement Organization for Indiana
- Currently he also serves as consultant to KEPRO, the Quality Improvement Organization (QIO)
Dr. Patel is a frequent speaker on the subject of quality in healthcare. His focus has been on improving methodology in care delivery to ensure Right Care at the Right Time at the Right Price.

Philip Eskew, DO, JD, MBA
Vice President, Clinical Development and General Counsel
Proactive MD
Dr. Eskew is the VP of Clinical Development and General Counsel for Proactive MD. He is also the Founder & CEO of DPC Frontier, a legal, regulatory, and growth resource for Direct Primary Care Practices. He also serves as a Site Medical Director for Corizon Health. He routinely researches all regulatory aspects surrounding direct primary care and is also volunteering his time as the General Counsel of the DPC Coalition.

Saria Saccocio, MD, MHA
President
Proactive MD
In her role as Company President, Dr. Saccocio leads Proactive MD’s Medical Affairs and Operations teams. She comes to us from Prisma Health, where she served for four years, most recently as Ambulatory Chief Medical Officer. Her impressive career includes a wide variety of medical leadership roles across the Southeast, from running her own primary care practice to serving as the Chief Medical Officer at Bon Secours St. Francis Health System. She received her MD with honors from the University of Florida, completed her residency at the University of Miami, and earned her MHA at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Most importantly, Dr. Saccocio shares our passion for enhancing the quality and accessibility of healthcare for the medically underserved and has volunteered her time and expertise at the Greenville Free Clinic for six years. When not working in a clinical or medical leadership capacity, Dr. Saccocio enjoys spending time with her husband Seth and teenage children Carter and Ella Rose, as well as hiking, reading, and traveling.

William Bestermann, MD
Senior Clinical Advisor
Congruity Health
William H. Bestermann Jr., MD is a board-certified internist who practiced preventive cardiology for 20 years. He has been heavily involved with health care reform and quality improvement during that same period. He wrote the first article on a systematic approach to the metabolic syndrome. He led an advanced cardiometabolic medical home that managed high risk diabetic and hypertensive patients for a Fortune 100 company in Tennessee.
He was a Senior Clinical Advisor for the Quality Blue Primary Care program at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana. That initiative saved $27 pmpm net at the 1 year mark while reducing hospitalizations, length of stay, and specialty referrals.
He is currently a senior clinical advisor for Congruity Health, and he consults with healthcare organizations to help them produce optimal medical therapy for cardiovascular and related conditions. You can see more of his content here.

Deniece Krebs, CHC
COVID-19 Project Manager, VirtualClinic.MD
DNA Detective, The Code Of YOU!
For nearly three decades Deniece has focused her attention and initiatives on empowering and developing individuals. This passion goes back to one of her first jobs while in college when she was involved in training new employees. Once she embarked on her entrepreneurial path, she provided leadership development to her corporate clients; and most recently to individual Epigenetic Human Performance Coaching to empower individuals in their own health journey by discovering and understanding their unique genetic and epigenetic code – The Code Of YOU!
When faced with the current Pandemic, she continued her push for being as healthy as possible to fight this foreign invader just like every other. This journey led her to take on the opportunity as “COVID-19 Project Manager” for a national company, Virtual Clinic, where she now uses her lifetime of skills to support and educate Clinicians in various COVID tests while also developing a full turn-key end-to-end solution for the ever-changing COVID testing mandates in schools and workplaces.
Deniece’s foundational belief is from a local respected businessman who said “Tell me all the reasons we CAN” as well as the core belief that information empowers and empowerment leads to health.

Louis Strauss, MD
Hospitalist
Apogee Physicians
Dr. Strauss is a father of 2 living in New Orleans, Louisiana. He graduated from Tulane School of Medicine and did his residency in family medicine at Chestnut Hill Hospital in Philadelphia.
He has held faculty appointments as an assistant clinical professor of Family Medicine at Tufts SOM, Medical University of South Carolina, and University of South Carolina.
He was the founding Medical director of two urgent care centers for Baystate Health in western Massachusetts, and more recently was core faculty at the McLeod Family Medicine residency program and founding program director for the McLeod Rural Family Medicine Program.
He currently works as a Hospitalist for Apogee Physicians and also serves as a medical reviewer for the South Carolina Board of Medicine. When not doing clinical work he can often be found working in his garden or hanging out in coffee shops in Uptown New Orleans.
CE Overview
University of South Carolina School of Medicine – Prisma Health-Midlands Continuing Medical Education Organization
Office of Continuous Professional Development and Strategic Affairs:
Website: https://sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/medicine/education/continuing_education/
Course Description
The summit aims to provide valuable information regarding current practices in primary health, risk management, acute care, and quality attainment. The summit is focused toward creating a strong foundation for primary health care by adding value to the overall healthcare experience and improving patient care.
Course Objectives
At the conclusion of this activity, participants should be able to:
- Incorporate evidence-based medicine into daily practice
- Illustrate the importance of communication and patient hand-off. Describe potential issues that could arise due to lack of communication and follow up between teams.
- Describe how the optimal use of technology can aid in increasing efficiency and effectiveness. Discuss strategies that can be used to optimize healthcare delivery
- Identify, respect, and care about patients’ differences, values, preferences and expressed needs. Listen, to clearly inform, communicate with, and educate patients.
- Utilize stress management strategies in the professional and personal
Accreditation Statement
This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the accreditation requirements and policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) through the joint providership of The University of South Carolina School of Medicine – Prisma Health-Midlands Continuing Medical Education Organization and ProactiveMD. The University Of South Carolina School of Medicine – Prisma Health-Midlands Continuing Medical Education Organization is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education for physicians.
Physicians
The University of South Carolina School of Medicine – Prisma Health-Midlands Continuing Medical Education Organization designates this live activity for a maximum of 4.0 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)TM. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.