Ben Lui, MD: SFMS June 2016 Member of the Month July 1, 2016 SFMS Member Ben Lui, Member of the Month, SFMS Member 0 An immigrant from Hong Kong at the age of twelve, Dr. Ben Lui and his family received health care from the very same health care safety net to which he has devoted his work since graduating from Yale Medical School and the SFGH Internal Medicine Primary Care Residency Program. Dr. Lui is currently the Medical Director and Center Director of Chinatown Public Health Center of the SF Department of Public Health which serves close to 6,000 patients, many of whom are socioeconomically disadvantaged and/or culturally isolated. In addition, Dr. Lui is an Assistant Clinical Professor at UCSF Division of General Internal Medicine at San Francisco General Hospital and the current President of the Board of Directors of NICOS Chinese Health Coalition. Prior to assuming his current positions, Dr. Lui was the Associate Medical Director at Asian Health Services, a FQHC in Oakland. He believes health care is a right and not a privilege, and feels honored to work in the safety net to help those patients most in need. He is passionate about creating a patient-centered community health home which provides timely access and whole person care for patients, and is fully engaged in improving the health of the community. Click here to view Dr. Ben Lui's practice information. Why are you a SFMS member? SFMS has long been a champion of public health issues. This very much aligns with my current work. Which SFMS member resource is most helpful to you? San Francisco Medicine, the official journal of SFMS, is an excellent read. It helps me keep up with the ever changing health care environment. What do you like to do when you're not at work? Most of the time you’ll find me horsing around with my 2.5 and 6 year-olds at various locales. I’ve also been known to keep up with player developments from all 30 major league teams in hopes of winning my fantasy baseball league. Occasionally you’ll find me at a café reading a good book. What is the most important thing you learned in medical school or residency? Be passionate: it will help sustain you. Be compassionate: it is part of healing. What are some of the biggest opportunities or challenges you see in health care within the next five years? California Medi-Cal 2020 demonstration provides incentives and resources to support design and adaptation of alternative payment methods to enable greater care integration toward whole person care. It is a great opportunity to transform our safety net such that clinical care providers, behavioral health and social services providers no longer work in silos, but will instead care for our disadvantaged populations in a coordinated, efficient and effective manner. What do you love most about practicing primary care? Practicing primary care is wonderful in that it addresses the whole person. Current systems are often inadequate to support the practice of primary care, however, and represent wonderful opportunities for system transformation and research. Primary care only truly succeeds when it is able to effectively address social determinants of health, and is naturally aligned with public health. Achieving greater integration of primary care and public health represents another area ripe with transformative possibilities. What is the best piece of advice you have been given throughout your career so far? Don’t be afraid of being wrong. Focus on asking the right questions and testing ideas. Learning from failure is often an essential part of the journey. Who’s your favorite music artist/band? The Beatles. Yes I’m old school. Embracing my Hong Kong heritage, I also enjoy the music of Cantopop artist Alan Tam. What is your favorite restaurant in San Francisco? Hong’s Szechuan in Outer Parkside, best xiao long bao (a type of steamed dumplings with soup inside) in the city! If you weren't a physician, which profession would you like to try? Urban planning Comments are closed.
