Broadcast Films

Hundreds of multimedia projects have been produced over the years by teams led by Dr. Denham. Documentarians wear many hats. He has served as executive producer, producer, writer, narrator, and even as a cameraman on skis. The following films are examples of the more than 250 film and multimedia projects undertaken. Multiple documentaries are in the pipeline. He will have produced and narrated more than 195 ninety-minute continuing medical education programs by the end of 2022. They may be viewed on the Global Patient Safety Forum website. The uniqueness of the TMIT approach is to co-produce training modules at the time of documentary shoots.

Discovery Channel Global Broadcast Films

Dr. Denham was a Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative Fellow in 2009 and a Senior Fellow in 2010 and 2011. His work there led to the production of a series of global documentaries on the Discovery Channel focused on unintentional medical error, systems failures, and opportunities for performance improvement. The films served as investigative journalism that used real stories of patients and caregivers that were broadcasted on the main Discovery Channel, were credentialed as formal Continuing Medical Education (CME) programs delivered through Discovery Health. The films were shot at the WHO in Switzerland, France, the U.K. and at major medical centers including the Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins, Harvard Affiliated Hospitals, and Harvard Business School. Approximately 2.5 hours of additional Continuing Education material was developed for each film and all of the assets including the broadcast films were provided for free to healthcare institutions and the public. Dr. Denham served as writer, director, and producer of the films. The films and work were co-funded by sponsors identified in the films and TMIT through donations by Denham.

Surfing the Healthcare Tsunami: Bring Your Best Board

Car racing, aviation, aerospace, and healthcare are similar. They continually push their limits in a high-risk environment. A safety net of invisible threads protects them. When those threads stretch, break, or are cut, accidents happen, ripping the joy of our loved ones from our lives. Racing and aviation differ from healthcare because they saw a great danger coming and learned hard lessons written in blood. It was their tsunami. Healthcare faces an impending tsunami of harm, waste, and distrust. This global epidemic is a wakeup call to healthcare leaders. Will you sink, swim, or surf the Healthcare Tsunami? Surfing the Healthcare Tsunami: Bring Your Best Board is the follow up to the award-winning documentary, Chasing Zero: Winning the War on Healthcare Harm aired on the Discovery Channel. Taking examples from high reliability industries such as auto racing, aviation, manufacturing, and even government, Surfing the Healthcare Tsunami provides leadership role models to help healthcare surf the impending tsunami of waste and harm.

Chasing Zero: Winning the War on Healthcare Harm

The Med Tac Bystander Care Certification program was developed by Dr. Denham and leaders from MD Anderson Cancer Center to address the more than 100,000 deaths per year that can be prevented if bystanders know simple medical best practices that anyone can perform with a minimal amount of training. The film 3 Minutes and Counting: Bystanders Care! is a documentary that is intended to inspire communities to develop programs to train schools, churches, membership organizations, and healthcare institutions to teach CPR and AED use, severe bleeding control, use of Narcan for opioid overdose, and other skills that can save lives in virtually any community.

This film evolved out of the work TMIT has led in the area of emerging threats and through the Med Tac Bystander Rescue Care Program. The COVID Crisis exposed enormous weaknesses in our public health system. The four major and invisible cords of our public health system are firefighters, law enforcement, emergency medical systems (EMS), and our nation’s emergency medicine departments. This film will highlight the critical importance of investing in recruitment, training, promotion, and performance improvement of these services. Of living great core values and optimizing “A Players”, moving “B Players to become A Players”, and removing “C Players” who do not live the values.

Dr. Denham has had a front-row seat to how healthcare fraud. How healthcare consumers, honest caregivers, administrators, and academics are harmed by those in the healthcare academic-industrial complex. This harm goes far beyond medical error. The film uses real-life cautionary tales including his own reputational and financial harm by dishonest clinicians, academics, and even government leaders. It will showcase the real invisible heroes of patient safety. Those who have quietly served their communities and have had national and even global impact without recognition of the press or academics pursuing their own agendas. It sets up the next film in the series Fraud Busters…Who You Gonna Call?

The film uses powerful stories to define the enormous risks to honest unsuspecting consumers, employers, and healthcare professionals. It provides a pragmatic and detailed step-by-step approach as to how honest consumers, researchers, clinicians, and caregivers can protect themselves from predatory scandal-seeking competitors. It pulls back the curtain and reveals how providers pad medical bills and sue honest patients and families. Medical debt is the leading cause of bankruptcy in America and in no small measure is due to fraud.  Taking “Who You Gonna Call” literally, the film and supporting training materials will provide the concepts, tools, and resources that can be used as “Fraud Busters”.

Originally produced with patient advocates in the 2000’s, this film will be updated and re-released. The patient advocates who were interviewed in the film went on to win the Global Pete Conrad Patient Safety Award for their work that led to the success of the Healthcare Acquired Conditions pay-for-performance program with the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid, which saved hundreds of thousands of lives and tens of billions of dollars.