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Friday, Mar 29, 2024

Burn Surgeon

Peter Grossman Title: Director Company: Grossman Burn Center Born: 1963, Chicago, Ill. Education: B.A. in history, Northwestern University; M.D., Chicago Medical School Personal: Married with two children Most Admired Person: Father Hobbies: Exercise, skiing Dr. Peter Grossman is a plastic surgeon specializing in cosmetic and reconstructive surgery for burn injuries. In 1995, he joined his father Dr. Richard Grossman’s practice at the Grossman Burn Center at Sherman Oaks Hospital and helped open new centers throughout the country, including current facilities in Bakersfield and Kansas City. Peter took over the day-to-day operations of the center around 2005 and in 2010 moved the original Valley burn center to the West Hills Medical Center. He also runs a general plastic surgery practice at the medical center. Grossman and his wife later founded the Grossman Burn Foundation, which has provided burn treatment to patients as far away as Kabul, Afghanistan and Halmahera, Indonesia. On Oct. 25 he will be honored at the Armand Arabian Awards in Woodland Hills for his work with the foundation. The Business Journal caught up with Grossman to discuss how he expanded the burn center, what he learned from his father and what he’s looking forward to at this year’s Arabian Awards. QUESTION: Why did your father establish the burn center? ANSWER:My dad was a plastic surgeon who came out to Los Angeles in the early 1960s. He had trained at Cook County Hospital in Chicago where he was a resident. While he was there, there was a large fire at a school called Our Lady of the Angels, which is a parochial school. Ninety-nine children and nuns died in that fire. He was the ER intern or resident on call at that time, and that last left a lasting impression on him. So, during his residency he had a passion and an interest in dealing with burns. He came out to California and was doing cosmetic surgery, but on the side with his extra time, he was taking care of burn patients. And he realized that every hospital that he went to in the Valley at the time did things differently. He went to a tiny hospital on Van Nuys Boulevard called Sherman Oaks Hospital and asked, “Can we set up a specific burn center? Give me a couple beds with nurses and we’ll see if we can set up a burn center.” So, around 1969, they said OK. How did he develop the center? They set up five beds that were specific to burns. And five became 10, 10 became 15, and 15 ultimately became 30 beds. It became the largest private burn center west of the Mississippi, which is pretty impressive for a small hospital on Van Nuys Boulevard. What inspired you to follow in his footsteps? As a kid growing up, I would spend time with my dad on the weekends, and before my brother and I would go out and do things with him, we’d go on rounds with him. And it was at that young age, probably 8 or 9, where I recognized that when my father would walk in the hospital and he would see his patients, they were incredibly appreciative of what he did. And that stuck with me as a kid. I thought, I’d like to have that in my life. So that was my impetus. Seeing that experience is why I wanted to go into medicine. When did you begin treating burn patients? Fast forward a number of years, after I finished my residency, finished my training, and I’m a plastic surgeon in the early 90s. I decided to do cosmetic surgery and burns, and as it turned out, I enjoyed both and I still do both. But by treating burns, what I recognized is that it makes you feel needed. It makes you feel like you have a sense of significance because not everybody wants to go into the burn care field. And when you have a good team that is really expert at it, it makes you feel proud to be part of that team. How did you help expand the burn center? I started doing more and more burn treatment, focusing on both acute care when people first got injured as well as reconstruction. And I started making a name for myself doing some of the reconstructive procedures that weren’t discovered when my father was doing his training. Still, I always felt that I was very fortunate that my father paved this path. He set up this practice; it was his legacy at Sherman Oaks Hospital. And as much as I was incredibly appreciative of that, I said to myself, “What can I do that would be my legacy?” And I recognized that we’ve got a pretty good package here. We have our intellectual property, we have our policies and procedures and protocols and we could probably replicate that. Where did you first expand? My dad and I expanded into Orange County, and then he thought, “Well, that’s all we can do.” And I said, “Dad, I think we can do more. I think we can go into other markets. We just have to change a little bit in how we are doing things.” He said, “No, we can’t do that.” And I said, “Would you mind if I did it, because that’s what I want to do.” With that, I took on the task of opening burn centers in different parts of the country with the idea that it would be a plastic surgery based. The reason I say that is because when you get burned and you heal from the hospital, you still have fairly significant scarring that is disfiguring and dysfunctional. I tell my patients when you leave the hospital, you’re only halfway home. How many centers are there now? We have three. We have one in Bakersfield, one in here in West Hills and one in Kansas City. We’re currently exploring other markets in different parts of the country. How are you adapting to an evolving health care market? Health care is becoming more of a merger of providers and systems. One thing that I remember is John Wooden said, “Failure isn’t necessarily fatal, but failure to change might be.” And we have to change our model sometimes and sometimes we can’t just be an independent practitioner. So, I’m always trying to keep my mind open as to what we can do to progress. Health care in general is changing. The delivery mechanism is changing. People want things in an Amazon model. They want it now and they want access and they want convenience. The wave is moving forward. What do those changes look like? Technology is delivering visual digital access and evaluation. I think our smart devices will play a role in how we deliver burn care. The store model of the hospital may not be as all-encompassing as it is today. People may have their appointments via their smartphone at home, especially in burns because a lot of burn treatment involves a visual evaluation. And if they don’t necessarily need to come to a hospital but they still want an expert opinion, or they don’t want to go to an urgent care or to their pediatrician or their primary doctor, perhaps we can use telemedicine. Also, delivery of products and dressing care may be more and more at home. What other new technologies are there? Artificial intelligence and miniaturization are helping us learn how to grow tissue in ways that are really more functional. There’s the hype that’s always out there, and you find things on the Internet that are more hype than reality. But I do think that over the next several years, tissue replacement and augmentation and using stem cells to stimulate our own immune system will play a role in both wound healing and reconstruction of tissue. How do your burn centers benefit partner hospitals? It’s the ability to develop a new service line, a center of excellence, that usually does not exist. In almost all hospitals you’ll see some needed service lines: orthopedics, cardiac medicine, renal medicine. But very few hospitals have burn centers. In fact, there are less than 130 burn centers for the 350 million people in the United States. I have the ability to develop a new service line, which helps the community so patients don’t have to travel for hours to get that treatment. I provide a revenue stream for the hospital because we’re doing procedures that otherwise would be sent out. I also bring recognition to that hospital because burns often come with a level of public interest after a tragic accident or a human-interest story when somebody was injured. Are there any other benefits? It has a halo effect because I don’t operate my burn program in a vacuum. It’s not just surgery, it’s medicine. It also involves laboratory work that all these patients need along with surgical work. Patients will come through the emergency department so the emergency department gets more volume. Radiology as well. The burn centers have a halo effect of benefit for the hospital and for the community. It’s kind of a unique niche that very few other medical businesses are developing. What are you most proud of about the burn center? I’m proud the fact that a small little center in the heart of the San Fernando Valley has been able to get positive worldwide attention. People come from around the world to see our center and that’s just not me. It’s who we are as a team. I have a great deal of pride that we’re able to deliver something that’s well looked after. And for a kid who grew up in the Valley, I get a kick out of that. What about your foundation? I’m proud of what my wife has done with our foundation. She had no medical background, but early on in our marriage, a child from Afghanistan came to our center who was horribly disfigured. I figured I was simply going to be the surgeon for that patient, but during the period of time that the patient was here, she was only 10 years old, she was going to get sent back to Afghanistan because her host family couldn’t handle her anymore. It was very depressing for me because I wasn’t nearly done. I mentioned it to my wife and she said, “Well, why don’t we take her?” So, she took her in and got her in school. We developed this relationship that we still have to this day, 15 years later with this child, who is now a mom herself and lives back in the Middle East. How did this experience inspire the foundation’s creation? We recognized that this child wasn’t an isolated case. There are hundreds of thousands of children and adults like this throughout the world who don’t have the same access to health care. Whatever complaints you may have about health care in the United States, it is far better than just about any place else in the world. And so we wanted to reach out to those places that don’t have access. Grossman Burn Foundation was initially started to show how to give access to people in parts of the world where they don’t have care, what the step-by-step process is so they can get care. How did the foundation evolve? It developed into helping those individuals who we could bring to the United States. It also developed into helping with the social needs of our patient population here and helping support groups from an emotional standpoint. Also, to raise awareness about stopping violence against women. In a lot of these places throughout the world, violence against women is perpetrated by means of either thermal or chemical injuries — battery acid or setting people on fire. We want people to know that this exists and raise awareness. We also have incidences in the U.S. where women have been physically abused in ways that relate to what we do as a foundation. And while I may be the face in front of it, the engine behind it is my wife. In what countries has the foundation have a presence? Indonesia, Afghanistan, Uganda and Kenya. How does it feel to be honored at the Armand Arabian Awards? It’s very exciting. First of all, I feel totally out of place there compared to everybody else who’s getting it. You have people like Ross Porter, who I grew up listening to with the Dodgers, and Charlie Beck — you can’t have a more important job than being a police chief in Los Angeles. Throughout the years there have been people honored that have been my role models, like John Wooden. And I think about the fact that Judge Arabian was such an iconic figure a here in the Valley. I’ve gone to the awards a couple of times over the past 15 years and have been impressed with the respect that he has within the legal community, among public servants and with fire and police departments. To be honored with an award that bears his name is pretty impressive. And I’m proud of the fact that it’s being sponsored by the (Encino) Chamber of Commerce, nearby where I grew up in Studio City. It’s a part of who I am. No matter where you get recognized, it’s always a great thrill, but there’s something special about being recognized at home.

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