Patient power – Islander invites his neighbors to appear on radio program about health issues

Published 6:52 pm Monday, November 24, 2008

By DeAnn Rossetti

In 1993, Island resident Andrew Schorr shared an idea with his jogging buddy of having a talk radio show that connected patients with leading medical experts. The fellow jogger was a pharmaceuticals representative for multiple sclerosis drugs that were approved by the FDA and he was eager to educate people about them, according to Schorr.

“He stopped cold and wanted to know more,” said Schorr.

Schorr produced videos for patients paid for by medical companies using real people talking about health issues through his company Schorr Video Communications, which he founded with his wife Esther.

With Berlex Labs as his first sponsor, Schorr started cranking out one-hour live telephone talk shows called HealthTalk, which connected patients with serious illnesses with leading medical experts on their condition. Schorr got biotech companies to sponsor many of the programs, and was able to have programs on everything from diabetes to breast cancer and bone marrow transplants.

In 1996, he added the programs to the Internet with HealthTalk.com, and added live remote broadcasts from town hall meetings, in which the physicians would speak on a health topic and the audience would ask questions. About 300,000 people have signed up for e-mail newsletters from the HealthTalk Web site.

Schorr Communications received venture capital funding in 2000 and changed its name to HealthTalk Inc. Earlier this month, HealthTalk merged with the Peer Group, a New Jersey company that educates doctors. The combined company employee tally rose from 50 to 550, with a new name, “Informed Medical Communications.”

Because communicating with patients is important to him, Schorr reduced his time at HealthTalk to three days a week and bought time on KVI-AM on Sundays to host a health show called “Andrew Schorr’s Patient Power.” The show debuted this month and runs from 8 to 9 Sunday mornings.

Schorr was uncertain where he was going to recruit guests for his show until he started looking around while he was shopping or working out at the gym on Mercer Island.

“I ran into oncologist Dr. Andrew Jacobs, head of cancer services at Virginia Mason, at the south-end QFC,” said Schorr. “He’s a neighbor of mine and I asked him to be on the first show.”

Schorr has also had his dentist, Dick Swanson, on his show, his friend Dr. Jens Chapman, a neurosurgeon, and Dr. Louis Jacobsen, an anesthesiologist and pain management expert. Schorr plans on having neighbors and fellow workout enthusiasts Ira Klein, a psychiatrist, Bill Crenshaw, a radiologist, and Alex Sytman, a cardiologist, all on the air soon.

“The banter at the gym is very helpful in finding topics for the show,” said Schorr. “People who know me know that I am looking for guests, and when I go out to dinner with a friend, I say, `What a great story!’ People stick to me like glue.”

Career began in television

Schorr, who has lived on Mercer Island for 18 years, was born in New York City and got his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. While still in college, Schorr got a job anchoring the news on WCHL for $2.25 an hour.

“I had to get up at 5 a.m. to do the news after being up until 1 a.m.,” he said. “So one morning instead of saying we were bombing Vietnam, I said we were bombing North Carolina! That was my first taste of the power of the media, because there was a panic.”

Schorr worked as an on-air television reporter for WBTV in Charlotte. He then became the producer for “PM Evening Magazine,” in North Carolina, a new “reality TV” phenomenon that was just emerging in television markets all over America in 1980.

“Out of the 30 cities that had `Evening Magazines’ we got the highest ratings,” said Schorr. “That won me a job with Westinghouse Broadcasting in San Francisco.”

Schorr became a national producer for Evening Magazine and was able to produce shows with TV personalities such as Maria Shriver, Matt Lauer, Leeza Gibbons, Mary Hart and Jeff Probst, the host of “Survivor.”

In 1982, Schorr said he decided to go to Hollywood to seek his fortune, and sell some screenplays. After producing a number of television documentaries that were related to health, Schorr and his wife founded Schorr Video Communications in the bedroom of their apartment.

After deciding to raise a family, the Schorrs moved to Seattle because they wanted to stay on the West Coast near relatives. They saw potential on Mercer Island.

“Where else can you find a safe, centrally-located community in a major metropolitan area that has a sizable Jewish population?” asked Schorr. “The JCC and Temple B’Nai Torah were here and made it easier for us.”

Cancer diagnosis

The same year he took HealthTalk to the Internet, 1996, Schorr was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). It is the most common adult type of leukemia and is terminal.

“My wife and I realized that there is a reason we are in this business, so we can practice what we’ve been preaching,” he said.

Schorr had always told his patients not to take one diagnosis as gospel, and to be a smart patient by doing research on your ailment and taking responsibility for your health.

“I realized my doctor wasn’t an expert in my condition, so we flew to Texas to the MD Anderson Center in Houston, where we saw the top doctor in the world for my disease, Dr. Michael Keating,” said Schorr. “He said don’t do anything right away, and what we will do is a clinical trial on something cutting edge.”

Schorr became part of a six-cycle clinical trial on the medication Rituxan, which had been approved for non-Hodgkins lymphoma but not for CLL.

“It worked out better than anyone hoped,” said Schorr, “I’ve remained negative (on a test for CLL) for nearly five years. I don’t think I am cured, but the cancer has been knocked back to an undetectable level. I became the poster child for what HealthTalk is all about; I took my own advice and have the best result you could hope for.”

Schorr is hoping to get sponsorship for his show to offset the fee that he’s charged by KVI for the broadcast. He also has a book proposal ready for a series of “Patient Power” books.

“I’d love to do public speaking, Patient Power seminars and even a Patient Power health cruise,” he said. “If there’s a place for me to be a correspondent for Patient Power on TV, I’d love to do that, too. I think I am on the leading edge of a national trend of Americans taking control of their health care, because no one else will. They need to recognize the need to be a smarter patient. I did, and I am alive today to tell about it.”

Andrew Schorr’s Patient Power is broadcast at 8 a.m. every Sunday on 570 KVI, Seattle, and is broadcast nationwide on the Internet at www.kvi.com.