Health Care Administration

Conflicts of interest, misrepresentation of clinical trials, hospital price-fixing, and massive expenditures for procedures of dubious efficacy - these and other critical flaws leave little doubt that the current US health-care system is in need of an overhaul. In this essential guide, preeminent physician Nortin Hadler urges American health-care consumers to take time to understand the existing system and to visualize what the outcome of successful reform might look like.

Medical students and physicians-in-training embark on a long journey that, although steeped in scientific learning and technical skill building, includes little guidance on the emotional and interpersonal dimensions of becoming a healer. Written for anyone in the health care community who hopes to grow emotionally and cognitively in the way they interact with patients, On Becoming a Healer explains how to foster doctor-patient relationships that are mutually nourishing.

The End of Roe v. Wade examines the systematic destruction of legal abortion on a state-by-state basis, as well as detailing the Trump administration's unprecedented efforts to end access to abortion and contraception on a federal level. This timely and urgent audiobook also offers a harrowing glimpse into what a post-Roe America will look like, previewing the next major battle over abortion rights - pitting those who chose to end their pregnancies outside of the legal medical system against those who will prosecute them.

All Americans deserve and should have access to high quality, affordable healthcare services delivered by professionals who have sufficient time and resources to care for them. This book offers proven and practical approaches for redesigning healthcare organizations to be less fragmented - and more patient-centered —-by tapping in to the experiences of staff on the front lines of patient care.

On December 24, 1992, six-year-old Lauren Rudolph was hospitalized with excruciating stomach pain. Less than a week later she was dead. Doctors were baffled: How could a healthy child become so sick so quickly? After a frenzied investigation, public-health officials announced that the cause was E. coli O157:H7, and the source was hamburger meat served at a Jack in the Box restaurant. During this unprecedented crisis, four children died and over seven hundred others became gravely ill.

The U.S. healthcare system is in critical condition--but this should come as a surprise to no one. Yet until now the solutions proposed have been unworkable, pie-in-the-sky plans that have had little chance of becoming law and even less of succeeding. In Code Red, David Dranove, one of the nation's leading experts on the economics of healthcare, proposes a set of feasible solutions that address access, efficiency, and quality.

In June 2009, Wendell Potter made national headlines with his scorching testimony before the Senate panel on health care reform. This former senior vice president of CIGNA explained how health insurers make promises they have no intention of keeping, how they flout regulations designed to protect consumers, and how they skew political debate with multibillion-dollar public relations campaigns designed to spread disinformation.

The coronavirus pandemic has devastated lives and livelihoods around the world - and continues to do so. These personal tragedies will, and must, be told and heard. There is, however, also a truthful and objective scientific narrative to be written about how the virus played out and how the world set about dealing with it. Spike is that story - from the inside. Its author, Jeremy Farrar, is one of the UK's leading scientists and a - member of the SAGE emergency committee.

In March 2010, the Affordable Care Act officially became one of the seminal laws determining American health care. From day one, the law was challenged in court, making it to the Supreme Court four separate times. It transformed the way a 3 trillion dollar sector of the economy behaved and brought insurance to millions of people. It spawned the Tea Party, further polarized American politics, and affected the electoral fortunes of both parties.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has been a political football for years now, but as its provisions start going into effect, there’s still precious little information available on how it will impact you, your family, and your pocketbook. This 2,572 page document, nearly unreadable, will change your health care, your family budget, and innumerable aspects of your life.

The biggest problem in American health care is us. Do you know how to tell good health care from bad health care? Guess again. As patients, we wrongly assume the "best" care is dependent mainly on the newest medications, the most complex treatments, and the smartest doctors. But Americans look for health-care solutions in the wrong places. For example, hundreds of thousands of lives could be saved each year if doctors reduced common errors and maximized preventive medicine.

The healthcare industry is undergoing major transformations, and if you're a Chief Information Officer (CIO) clinging to outdated methods, your organization is at risk. As a CIO, your key role is enabling Population Health Management and transforming your organization from a reactive to proactive focus on future systems. But this requires looking beyond the walls of the hospital.

In this short audiobook, R.W. Murphy makes the argument that the US healthcare delivery system is irreparably broken as the result of a perfectly inelastic demand curve for healthcare goods and services. In essence, he indicates that Americans will buy the same number of units regardless of price and that is destroying the system. He points to all the retail level cost control initiatives to date as failing to address wholesale pricing pressures. His premise is that underlying wholesale cost increases have hardly been affected at all.

When her daughter desperately needed a lung transplant to survive, Janet Murnaghan rallied against the outdated restrictions in health care that would limit her daughter's options. Transplant laws, restricting access to lungs based on arbitrary age restrictions, meant Sarah's options were limited. The injustice of her daughter's fate spurred Janet to start a public battle against outdated health-care regulations and a battle to save Sarah's life.

Andy Lazris, MD, is a practicing primary care physician who experiences the effects of Medicare policy on a daily basis. As a result, he believes that the way we care for our elderly has taken a wrong turn and that Medicare is complicit in creating the very problems it seeks to solve. Aging is not a disease to be cured; it is a life stage to be lived. Lazris argues that aggressive treatments cannot change that fact but only get in the way and decrease quality of life.

The sometimes fragmentary tales of these people, their lives and deaths, are not included in official histories of a place. How, Ensign asks, has a large, socially progressive city like Seattle responded to the health needs of people marginalized by poverty, mental illness, addiction, racial/ethnic/sexual identities, and homelessness? Drawing on interviews and extensive research, Ensign shares a diversity of voices within contemporary health care and public policy debates.

Why a book on health care? Our systems have long been broken, even before the Covid-19 pandemic hit. The great progress in medicine is just not affordable any longer. Widespread frustration prevails and finger pointing in a silo-mentality are dominating the public narrative on the matter. Why have we missed the train of digitalization and value-based principles in health care? Any other industry has long recognized that customer focus is the holy grail to success. But, in health care, why have we so terribly lost focus on our ultimate customer - the patient?

At first glance, the events in this book may seem equal parts science fiction and legal thriller. Unfortunately, this is a true story of blinding greed, cruel deceit, unfortunate circumstance, and powerful human tragedy. It has villains and heroes, but it does not yet have a good ending. It is the story of asbestos in America.

Chronic pain affects one in three Americans and exerts more than a $600 billion drain on the economy annually. It is the largest invisible epidemic in the land. Having treated thousands of patients with chronic pain - often when they were at their most vulnerable - Lynn R. Webster, MD, continues to believe there is hope. Ultimately, a cure for pain will require more research, better therapies, and improved policies. But healing can begin today with a broad-based approach to treatment, including compassionate support from those closest to the ones who are hurting.

In a series of brief and personal essays, Why We Revolt describes what is wrong with industrial healthcare, how it has corrupted its mission, and how it has stopped caring. Montori rescues the language of patient care to propose a revolution of compassion and solidarity, of unhurried conversations, and of careful and kind care.