This MedAxiom HeartTalk explores recent TVT Registry data on racial and socioeconomic disparities in structural heart programs, such as TAVR. Host Melanie Lawson talks with Wayne Batchelor, MD, Inova Health, Kimberly Guibone, DNP, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Joan Michaels, RN, of the American College of Cardiology. They examine some possible reasons for these disparities and a few strategies CV programs can use to bridge this gap.

Guest Bios:

Kimberly Guibone, DNP, ACNP- BC, FACC

Dr. Guibone is the Structural Heart Clinical Program Manager at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, MA and has led the Structural Heart program there since its inception and early clinical trials. She did her graduate work at Georgetown University in Washington, DC and completed her doctoral studies in Nurse Executive Leadership at Simmons University in Boston, MA. She is currently a member of the ACC/STS TVT Registry Steering Committee and the ACC Lifelong Learning Oversight Committee. Her areas of interest include enhancement of the advanced practitioner role, disparities in healthcare, development of the heart team, and clinician burnout.

Joan Michaels, RN, MSN, CPHQ, AACC

Ms. Michaels is Director of Cardiac Registries for the American College of Cardiology. She has been with the ACC for more than 13 years and is the Program Manager for the STS/ACC TVT Registry. Ms. Michaels is a registered nurse with extensive experience working in the cardiovascular area. Prior to working at ACC, she held several management positions at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, Va. Most recently, she was the Director of the NIH Cath Lab at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. Ms. Michaels received her BSN from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and her MSN from The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC.


Wayne Batchelor, MD, MHS, FSCAI

Born in Kingston, Jamaica, West Indies, Dr. Batchelor grew up in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, where he graduated class valedictorian from Frontenac Secondary High School. In 1990, he received a Bachelor of Arts and Medical Degree from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada and was the recipient of the Dr. and Mrs. Sydney P. Schiff Medal in Surgery and the Nathan E. Berry Prize in Urology. He furthered his post-graduate medicine training by completing a Comprehensive Internal Medicine Residency and Fellowship in Adult Cardiology at the University of Toronto (UOT), where he received the University of Toronto Sopman Award for Clinical Excellence and Human Compassion. Upon completing a Cardiology Fellowship at the UOT, he was awarded a National Research Fellowship from the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, which took him to Duke University, where he received a Master's of Health Science Degree and completed a 3-year Research Fellowship at the Duke University Clinical Research Institute under the supervision of Professor Robert Califf (incoming FDA Commissioner). During this time, he also completed an Advanced Fellowship in Interventional Cardiology. Thereafter, Dr. Batchelor returned to Toronto, where he served as an Assistant Professor of Medicine, Interventional Cardiologist and Clinician Investigator in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto (St. Michael's Hospital). In 2002, he moved to the US and was hired by Southern Medical Group, PA, in Tallahassee, Florida. There, he co-founded the Tallahassee Research Institute (TRI), a broad-based independent cardiovascular clinical research institute, which rapidly grew to be the most active research program in Florida's Panhandle. He joined the Medical Faculty at the Florida State University College of Medicine and was promoted to Adjunct Associate Professor of Medicine.

In Tallahassee, Florida, he held numerous Executive Leadership positions, including Chair of the Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare Medical Staff Executive Committee (2009-2010), President of Southern Medical Group, PA, President of TRI, and served on the Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare Board of Trustees. He currently holds numerous leadership positions within national and international cardiology organizations, including Chair of the American College of Cardiology's (ACC) Interventional Sectional Leadership Council, Program Committee Member for the 2021 ACC/World Congress of Cardiology Scientific Sessions, Member of the Scientific Program Committee of the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) Meeting and active Member of the NCDR STS/TVT Registry's Steering Committee. He also currently serves as President of the Duke University Cardiovascular Cooperative Society (DUCCS) and is past President of the South Atlantic Cardiovascular Society (SACS). Dr. Batchelor was instrumental in developing one of the most advanced and innovative interventional cardiology and structural heart programs in Florida and was the first physician in the region to perform transradial percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). In 2011, Dr. Batchelor led North Florida's first Structural Heart Program and soon thereafter performed the region's first transcatheter mitral valve repair and transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) procedures. For over 15 years, he provided the region's primary clinical leadership and research within interventional cardiology.

Dr. Batchelor has published over 140 original abstracts/manuscripts, multiple book chapters and has given hundreds of invited lectures. He has overseen and/or participated in over 170 clinical trials, including being Principal Investigator in over 75. He also founded the Florida Institute for Medical Education (FIME), a corporation focusing on educating interventional cardiologists on new innovative procedures and promoting research. He has served on several international clinical trial steering committees and was the National Co-Principal Investigator for the PLATINUM DIVERSITY study, which is the first to prospectively evaluate clinical outcomes and socioeconomic status in minorities and women after contemporary coronary stent procedures in 52 sites across the United States. In March 2017, Dr. Batchelor was recognized by his physician peers in North Florida as the Capital Medical Society's Outstanding Physician of the Year.

In 2019, Dr. Batchelor was hired by the Inova Health System in Falls Church, Virginia, to serve as the Director of Interventional Cardiology, Directory of Interventional Cardiology Research, Education and Innovation and Associate Director of the Inova Heart and Vascular Institute. As such, he heads up a large interventional cardiology program within Inova's $5 billion health system that spans five metropolitan hospitals and is responsible for the executive leadership clinical, research and educational efforts within the health system's Interventional Cardiology Program. In 2022, he was appointed as the Chair of the Interventional Leadership Council of the American College of Cardiology (ACC), representing over 5,000 interventional cardiology members nationally and internationally. He has also recently been appointed as a special government employee and consultant to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) within the Cardiovascular Devices Branch and has served on the Circulatory System Device panel. Dr. Batchelor is board-certified in Cardiovascular Diseases with added qualifications in Interventional Cardiology and enjoys traveling, playing tennis, and spending time with his wife Zaneta and two children, Nadia and Samia.