BizTimes Milwaukee

Dr. Beth Ann Drolet of Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin pioneered a new center to research and develop treatment for a fairly common occurrence in babies that can have a deadly outcome if allowed to grow.

A few months after Kayleigh Ali was born, her mother, Nicole, noticed Kayleigh’s stomach seemed enlarged and felt hard to the touch. Kayleigh’s pediatrician repeatedly assured the family that she was fine.

However, in January 2005, an X-ray revealed that the eight- month- old had tumors on her liver.

The rapidly growing tumors were non-cancerous masses of blood vessels, called hemangiomas.

Dr. Patricia Safavi begins her morning with her own three children before venturing to Next Door Pediatrics to spend the rest of the day with other people’s children. She’s a doctor who is devoted to the simple, but sometimes altruistic notion that everyone who needs health care should receive it, even if they are low in income and have no insurance.

“I got into pediatric care to have an effect on prevention,” Patricia says. “Having families raise their children rather than try to solve problems on the back end from less than-optimal resources.”

Kathy Komas was a teacher, a painter, a volunteer, a writer, a mother, a grandmother and a woman who had a smile that melted her husband Ronald’s heart. Kathy had cancer three times before she passed away in 2002. She was 56 years old.

Her first cancer diagnosis was breast cancer. Kathy had a mastectomy of her left breast and was deemed cancer-free.

One year later, she felt a lump in her neck and shoulder and found out that the cancer had come back. Kathy underwent chemotherapy and radiation.

Lisa Alberte is more than a nurse. She is a case manager, a vocational rehabilitator and she has a dozen certifications – one of which is as a fork lift operator. Lisa provides expert testimony for attorneys, runs her own company and still finds time to raise a family, write a book and decorate cakes.

“A fork lift is no different from driving daddy’s truck or tractor,” says Alberte, who was raised on a farm in Chaseburg, Wis.

She obtained her fork lift certification 12 years ago because a patient had fallen off a fork lift and had suffered a brain injury.

At the University of Minnesota, Michael Kellum studied chemistry. One night, he and a date watched a movie about doctors. Inspired by the film, Kellum registered for medical school the next day.

During his four years of medical school, he worked closely with a doctor conducting research. It was there that intense tutoring sessions took place, and Kellum’s medical curiosity was forever piqued.

Kellum was a pediatrician in Maine until 1982, when he shifted his specialty to emergency medicine and his practice to Chicago. Shortly thereafter, his wife called the Elkhorn Chamber of Commerce and discovered a new hospital was being built there. Two weeks later, Kellum interviewed and received a new job.

When a parent has mental illness, the entire family can be torn apart, and children can become invisible to the social welfare system. To address that disconnect, the Mental Health Association (MHA) in Milwaukee County, under the guidance of president and chief executive officer Martha Rasmus, created the Invisible Children’s Program (ICP) to address the gap in services available to families and reduce the negative impact mental illness has on a family.

Local hospitals whose main focus is on medical and surgical services can have a difficult time offering a fiscally viable behavioral health unit, according to David Moulthrop, president and chief executive officer of Oconomowoc-based Rogers Memorial Hospital.

“Behavioral health care is really an area of health care where funding is very poor,” Moulthrop said. “There are caps on typical insurance benefits, so reimbursements are often money losers for hospitals.”

Insurance companies often impose reimbursement caps for behavioral health treatment at no higher than $8,000, Moulthrop said.

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