Meet Dr. Billy Mallon from Code Black Movie

Billy Mallon has been a member of the Emergency Medicine faculty at LAC+USC Medical Center for over 2 decades, including 10 years as the Emergency Medicine Residency Director. As an educator he has won numerous teaching awards locally and nationally for his teaching style which is direct and unfiltered. He is a past president of the California Chapter of ACEP, a Fulbright Senior Scholar (to Iceland), an AOA Faculty Inductee, and has lectured in over 20 countries on a wide variety of EM topics.Dr. Mallon has been intimately involved with the export of EM as a specialty to other countries to improve patient care. He helped to found the specialty of EM in Chile during a sabbatical year spent in South America, and he also obtained a Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene from the Gorgas’ School of Tropical Medicine in Lima, Peru. LAC+USC Medical Center has been his clinical home since 1987 when he began his internship there, followed by his EM residency, and ultimately joining the faculty in 1991. Dr. Billy Mallon shares with Sonosite the story of his experience in the emergency room at LA County Hospital. "I would hate to midlead people to think that I go home, emotionally drained, with PTSD. I don't. I go home excited about the work"

"I think if you're an ER doc, there has to be a partition...between you and that interpersonal carnage that makes up the day in and day out of a busy emergency room."

The doctor and teacher also had an important role in the film, even from its inception. The early stages of the film were merely archival footage, says Dr. Mallon. "It wasn't until we actually looked at what he shot, and we were like, 'wow, this is really good.'"

However, as the film developed, so did the story that got told.

Eventually Dr. Mallon became one of the characters featured in the documentary. According to Dr. Mallon, "People don't want to hear what the old farts have to say. They all come with their biases or some sort of political vantage point."  "My real role was raising money for the film," he insists. However, although an older doctor than the others featured, his experience adds something new to the film. Sonosite asks Dr. Billy Mallon in the final interview question, what he would like audiences to take away from the film. Dr. Mallon shares quite blatantly, "For whatever the discussions are that go forward about healthcare... it would be nice if they were intelligent discussions."

Watch the Code Black Movie Trailer