Gilda’s Club South Florida is a free cancer support community for women, men, children, and teens with all types of cancer and their families and friends. We offer networking groups, lectures, workshops, specialized children’s and teen programs, and social events in a nonresidential, non-medical, home-like setting.

Looking back over the year, we are thankful for all the amazing support we have received from individuals, corporations and foundations in our community who have helped us bring so many wonderful programs to our members.

We continue to offer over 15 networking and support groups for various types of cancer, including lung, thyroid, breast, ovarian, lymphoma, prostate, etc., and we have expanded our men’s group to include both a breakfast and dinner group. In 2008 we added a Hispanic support group, as well as a gay men’s support group.

Our children’s program, Noogieland, has expanded to offer new programs including our Super Sibs program to focus on the siblings of children with cancer, and our teen program has really taken off, going from meeting every other week to weekly meetings.

Our lecture and workshop series has been a huge success. We held our annual “Day of Wellness” with over 100 participants; our “Day of Research and Hope” with close to 250 participants, and our first annual “Day of Hispanic Wellness” drew 30 participants. We continue to enhance and expand our Ask the Expert series, and offer an average of 60 events each month for our members including yoga, art meditation, stress reduction, and nutrition classes.

Our social activities were very well attended. We held our popular Noogiefest, Boogie Noogie Nights, Birthday Bash, our Annual Art Show, and our Volunteer Appreciation Party, and we also added a new event—our Holiday Potluck Party.

It’s been a good year here at Gilda’s Club. We are thankful to our supporters, but most importantly we are thankful for the many volunteers who support our members, the many friendships that have been formed, the many lessons that have been shared, and all the encouragement and hope families have found here at our clubhouse.



Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) is far and away the leading cause of death in the United States. However, since 1975, mortality rates for CHD have declined by approximately 28% and 45% of this decline is attributed to the improvement in medical therapies for coronary disease. 55% of this decrease is due to modifications in cardiac risk factors (smoking, hypertension, diet, dyslipidemia, diabetes mellitus, physical inactivity, obesity).

The foundation of the Veterans Health Administration’s (VHA) cardiovascular health initiatives are based on prevention and patient education. The VHA has developed aggressive programs targeting the cardiac risk factors noted above. Efforts towards the prevention and treatment of Heart Disease include: the routine monitoring and tracking of patients’ blood pressure and cholesterol, smoking cessation programs which have significantly decreased the number of cigarette smoking veterans, and the VHA’s initiative towards Managing Overweight/Obese Veterans Everywhere (MOVE).

VA healthcare considers education and prevention intrinsically related to each other. Patients are educated not only about the risk factors of heart disease, but the symptom of heart attacks. Effective treatment of a patient who has had a heart attack depends primarily on timely care, diagnosis, and proper treatment.

Recognition of the VHA as a leader in quality care is highly evident by major patient satisfaction surveying bodies. A recent RAND Survey revealed that the VHA outperforms all other sectors of American Healthcare in 294 measures of quality related to disease prevention and treatment. A New England Journal of Medicine study from 2003 compared the VHA to fee for service Medicare Providers on 11 measures related to quality. The VHA scored significantly higher on every single measure. For six straight years, the VHA has led private sector healthcare in the independent American Customer Satisfaction Index.



Daren D. Grosman, M.D., Ph.D.
Director, Leukemia & Lymphoma Program

When Dr. Daren Grosman’s medical training took him to Boston for six years, his heart for cancer patients remained in South Florida, drawing him back eventually as a hematologist/oncologist at the Memorial Cancer Institute and then as the director of its Leukemia & Lymphoma Program, based at Memorial Hospital West in Pembroke Pines.

Dr. Grosman has made his mark in the four years since he assumed that role, developing a complete inpatient and outpatient program to provide specialized care for anyone with leukemia, lymphoma or multiple myeloma. Then, at the start of 2007, the Memorial Cancer Institute opened Broward County’s only Bone Marrow Transplant program at Memorial Hospital West. Nearly twenty patients have already received successful transplants.

Dr. Grosman and his colleagues are committed to providing access to the latest in innovative cancer care. To that end, they have established an affiliation with the world-renowned Mayo Clinic to provide access to clinical trials for Memorial Cancer Institute patients right here in South Florida.

After receiving his medical degree and PhD in molecular biology from the University of Miami, Dr. Grosman went to Boston where he was a clinical fellow in medicine at Harvard Medical School and completed his hematology/oncology fellowship at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. During this time, Dr. Grosman was actively involved in clinical and basic science research in blood cancers and bone marrow transplantation.

Dr. Grosman is a Diplomate of the National Board of Medical Examiners and American Board of Internal Medicine. He has subspecialty board certification in hematology. Dr. Grosman is a past recipient of the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s Young Investigator Award and is the immediate past President of the Southern Florida chapter of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.



Honesty, integrity, and ethics are the three guiding principles that drive Jose Carreras to excel professionally and personally. As the COO and vice president of ProMD Practice Management, Carreras has always been aggressively motivated to lead and succeed.

Under his guidance, Carreras has helped his South Florida practice management company develop a niche in improving a medical practice’s operations. His firm distinguishes itself from other billing companies by examining an office’s operations from a total management perspective as well as combining billings and collections with practice operations.

“We provide ala carte billing services for physicians using their own practice management system,” says Carreras, “as opposed to a billing company that makes you use their system. While this makes it more efficient for the billing company because they’re using the same system for all clients, we don’t believe that it’s the best for the doctor because that doctor doesn’t own his data.”

Usually a doctor has two choices: to do billings and collections internally to maintain control or outsource the work and lose control of the data. ProMD provides the best of both of these worlds because physicians can still outsource billings and collections to a company which has this expertise without giving away control.

“We’re going to do it using that doctor’s practice management system,” says Carreras, “by tapping in remotely through the Internet into that doctor’s system. At anytime that doctor can audit us. If at any point, they’re not happy with us, the data remains in their system. So every month we really have to prove our worth to every doctor to whom we provide a service to because we can easily be terminated. With a regular billing company, it would hurt the day-to-day operations if he or she had to change it.”

By providing billing and collection services with an operations perspective, ProMD is not just collecting data; it is also identifying trends and looking at maximizing the performance from an operations standpoint.

“We provide practice assessments where we perform an operational assessment of an existing practice to identify strengths and opportunities,” says Carreras. “If the physician is not satisfied with our findings and recommendations, we do not charge for the assessment.”

ProMD uses benchmarks to evaluate a Practice’s performance established by the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA).

“We want to ensure that we meet and surpass the industry’s benchmarks in billings and collections,” says Carreras. “As of today, our collection rates are over 90% in 6 months and over 95% in over 9 months. Both surpass the industry standards.”

Those who know Carreras shouldn’t be surprised by his firm’s success. Success follows him wherever he goes. In fact, in 2006, he was nominated and selected Best Practice Administrator by the readers of the Florida Medical Business Journal.

Carreras attributes his values, drive, and determination to his professional background and education. He has been involved in the healthcare industry since 1982. He started out at Jackson Memorial Hospital, where he remained for 11 years. During his tenure there, he earned his bachelor’s degree and then a master’s in healthcare administration, where he was on the national dean‘s list throughout the program.

“My master’s degree, combined with my hands-on management experience, has made me the type of manager which I am today,” says Carreras. “I try to instill in my managers the same management techniques I learned to create a culture in the company that looks after our employees and makes them feel that they have ownership of the products and services that we provide.”

During his second phase of his career, Carreras helped manage medical centers. Later he went to work for United Healthcare in its Sunrise office as its director of operations overseeing its claims resolution unit, the provider appeal unit, and risk arrangements. Carreras then went to work for the private sector as a practice administrator for South Florida Prenatal Medicine for six years before ProMD was spun off from this organization.

“We pulled out the management component of the medical practice and created a management company which was ProMD,” says Carreras.

Ask Carreras about his career influences, and he quickly credits ProMD’s founder, Dr. Jorge Gomez.

“His vision inspires me to grow as a professional and to grow ProMD because he was the visionary of ProMD,” says Carreras. “We are where we are today because of his vision of providing an innovative, proficient and focused company that has the best interest of maximizing the physician’s practice performance and profitability.”



Florida is a state with a rich diversity of cultures and ethnic groups. The state has long been associated with Cuban and Haitian peoples. However, these days Florida’s residents include migrant workers from Central America, Vietnamese and Hmong peoples, and even one of the United State’s largest populations of Palestinians, concentrated in the city of Jacksonville.

What kind of challenges does this diversity pose to physicians, most specifically orthopedic surgeons? Dr. Patrick Hutton, an orthopaedic surgeon and member of the Diversity Advisory Board of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) is someone who cares deeply about providing quality care to diverse populations. He explains, “The fallacy is that treating all patients the same is identical to giving everyone equal treatment. You have to take into account the fact that an explanation for example of knee surgery, which may be clearly understood by most patients, could leave an Hispanic person with an incomplete understanding of the proposed procedure. Then there’s the factor of what kind of care that patient has received in the past, his or her preconceived notions and bad experiences. Patients with varied cultural backgrounds often walk into our offices with fearful, or at the very least, different expectations of treatment, as compared to many middle class people who’ve had basically good care their entire lives.”

Dr. Hutton is a past president of the Florida Medical Association. It was during his tenure there that he started to focus on healthcare access for the underinsured. He began to understand the real disparity that exists in healthcare for minorities and diverse ethnic groups. AAOS’s Diversity Advisory Board interested him because the group conducts free training to orthopaedic surgeons. Culturally Competent Care: An Orthopaedist’s Responsibility is a free seminar being offered to orthopaedic residents across the country. Dr. Hutton and Dr. David Font-Rodriguez are two orthopaedic surgeons who are heavily involved in that effort in Florida.

“We’ve divided the orthopaedic programs in Florida. I’ll be conducting the training in northern Florida orthopaedic programs, while Dr. Font-Rodriguez is covering schools in the south. Each school will get a visit from one of us during their five year residency cycle”, Hutton explains. The program is conducted with a grand rounds format, with both didactic and interactive elements. Presenters discuss various patient scenarios that require cultural competence. At session’s end, residents receive a free “Cultural Competency Challenge CD-Rom,” and “Culturally Competent Care Guidebook,” created by the AAOS.

Chairman of the Diversity Advisory Board, Dr. Ramon Jimenez, outlines what he considers the basic ingredients of culturally competent care: curiosity, awareness, sensitivity and communication. Dr. Hutton describes how he carries out those qualities in his orthopaedic practice. “Doctors have to be willing to accept the things patients do that give them a sense of well-being – as long as what they’re doing doesn’t hurt them in any way. For instance, if patients treat injuries with a hot soak in Epsom salts because it’s grandma’s old remedy, let them do it. Even if it realistically doesn’t improve the condition, it still means something to the patient’s well-being.”

He’s also observed that some African American male patients may be reluctant to take medications to treat hypertension due to possible side effects. “They can also be unwilling to participate in clinical trials because of what happened during the Tuskegee experiment. Doctors need to be sensitive to why people have those fears.” In addition to conducting the Cultural Competency seminars, Hutton continues to learn about diversity first hand. He regularly volunteers in a healthcare clinic his church runs for migrant workers.

When asked how doctors can be expected to exercise sensitivity and awareness in the age of managed care Hutton suggests, “During the very first patient visit, doctors should really try to get to know the patient and create an understanding of who that person is. Push through to make a connection on the first visit and you can build on that in later visits. We’ve found that a good first interview can make a big difference.”

Across the country, AAOS has found residents to be very receptive to the seminars, and they give the program good marks. The rewarding part of championing the cause of culturally competent care, for Dr. Hutton, comes with reaching out to younger people to teach them, “It’s all part of giving back some of what I’ve learned from my patients and mentors,” he says.