Dr. Larry Blonde is Chief of Endocrinology and Metabolic Diseases and Vice Chairman of Medicine at the Ochsner Clinic in New Orleans. He is a former member of the Board of Directors of the American Diabetes Association and former Chair of the ADA Professional Practice Committee which develops practice guidelines for the care of patients with diabetes. Dr. Blonde and Dr. Richard D. Guthrie, his co-investigator, co-direct a clinical trials activity at the Ochsner Clinic and Alton Ochsner Medical Foundation focused on phase II and phase III studies of new pharmacologic agents for the treatment of patients with Type II diabetes mellitus and/or dyslipidemia and investigations of new therapies and health care delivery systems for them. The Ochsner clinical research activity employs three full time study coordinators. There are four additional diabetologists in the Endocrinology Section who are available to assist Dr. Blonde and Dr. Guthrie at their site. Dr. Blonde has served as Head of the Ochsner Section on Endocrinology and Metabolic Diseases and Dr. Guthrie as Head of the Ochsner Primary Care Division. There has thus been developed a strong collaboration between the Ochsner Endocrinology group and the 120 primary care physicians at Ochsner. The Ochsner Medical Institutions have over 1,000,000 patient visits annually. In addition to the New Orleans main campus, there are 20 local satellite facilities, a regional 80 physician campus in Baton Rouge and numerous smaller sites throughout South Louisiana. The study population for Ochsner Clinic has a percentage contribution of about 50% African Americans.
Dr. Blonde and Dr. Guthrie have also had an interest in health services research specifically aimed at evaluating innovative approaches to health care delivery for diabetic patients. One recently concluded outcome study involved a collaboration among primary care physicians, endocrinologists, and diabetes nurse educators supervised by endocrinologists with usual care by primary care general internists. Approximately 200 diabetic patients were recruited from the Ochsner managed care population for this study which evaluated differences in glycemic control, quality of life, patient satisfaction, health care utilization, and several other parameters of health care delivery. The results of this study have been presented at the scientific sessions of the American Diabetes Association and the European Association for the Study of diabetes. Ochsner was the lead clinical center for a large quality of life study recently reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Dr. Blonde has extensive experience in computer assisted medical education and computer systems for patient diagnosis and treatment. He has served as Chair of the American College of Physicians Medical Informatics Subcommittee and is a member of the advisory board of the Microsoft Health Care Users Group.
Contact
Ochsner Clinic 1514 Jefferson Hwy. New Orleans, LA 70121 Phone: (504) 842-4096 lblonde@ochsner.org