Health Care Administration

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.

Until very recently, if you were to ask most doctors, they would tell you there were only two kinds of medicine: the quack kind, and the evidence-based kind. The former is baseless, and the latter based on the best information human effort could buy. Well, Eric Topol isn't most doctors, and he suggests you entertain the notion of a third kind of medicine, one that will make the evidence-based state-of-the-art stuff look scarcely better than an alchemist trying to animate a homunculus in a jar.

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.

In The Long Fix, physician and health-care CEO Vivian S. Lee, MD, cuts to the heart of the health-care crisis. The problem with the way medicine is practiced, she explains, is not so much who's paying, it's what we are paying for. Insurers, employers, the government, and individuals pay for every procedure, prescription, and lab test, whether or not it makes us better - and that is both backward and dangerous.

Lurking in our homes, hiding in our offices, and polluting the air we breathe is something sinister. Something we’ve turned a blind eye to for far too long. Dr. Leonardo Trasande, a pediatrician, professor, and world-renowned researcher, tells the story of how our everyday surroundings are making us sicker, fatter, and poorer. Through a blend of narrative, scientific detective work, and concrete information about the connections between chemicals and disease, he reveals what we can do to protect ourselves and our families in the short-term, and how we can help bring the change we deserve.

From Joseph Romm, Chief Science Advisor for National Geographic's Years of Living Dangerously series and one of Rolling Stone's "100 people who are changing America," Climate Change offers user-friendly, scientifically rigorous answers to the most difficult (and commonly politicized) questions surrounding what climatologist Lonnie Thompson has deemed "a clear and present danger to civilization."

Few of us need convincing that the American health insurance system needs reform. But many of the existing proposals focus on expanding one relatively successful piece of the system or building in piecemeal additions. These proposals miss the point. As the Stanford health economist Liran Einav and the MIT economist and MacArthur Genius Amy Finkelstein argue, our health care system was never deliberately designed, but rather pieced together to deal with issues as they became politically relevant.

Teeth takes listeners on a disturbing journey into America's silent epidemic of oral disease, exposing the hidden connections between tooth decay and stunted job prospects, low educational achievement, social mobility, and the troubling state of our public health.

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.

A renowned cardiologist and Harvard professor spells out the future digital shift of medicine—and how it will impact the lives not only of patients and health care professionals but of all humans.

Well-heeled American corporations have long had a financial stake in undermining scientific consensus and manufacturing uncertainty. In The Triumph of Doubt, former Obama and Clinton official David Michaels details how corrupt science becomes public policy - and where it's happening today.

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.

There's a revolution going on right now. On the frontiers of medicine, some doctors have developed an approach for treating people that is more effective, more humane, and more affordable. It's an approach to healthcare that has captured the attention of the media and business elite. It's all happening at Cleveland Clinic, one of the most innovative, forward-looking medical institutions in the nation. In this groundbreaking book, Toby Cosgrove, MD, reveals how the Clinic works so well and argues persuasively for why it should be the model for the nation.

Most consumers agree their service experiences with hospitals, clinics, and physicians fall well short of their service experiences with hotels, resorts, and restaurants. So, what would their experiences be like if healthcare providers served them the same way hospitality providers do? Given that both industries share many common service touchpoints, one wonders whether healthcare service providers could adopt principles of hospitality to enhance the patient experience. The insights shared in this book reveal the answer: yes!

Patients at Risk: The Rise of the Nurse Practitioner and Physician Assistant in Healthcare exposes a vast conspiracy of political maneuvering and corporate greed that has led to the replacement of qualified medical professionals by lesser trained practitioners. As corporations seek to save money and government agencies aim to increase constituent access, minimum qualifications for the guardians of our nation’s healthcare continue to decline - with deadly consequences.

Today, 90 percent of psychiatric beds are located in jails and prisons across the United States, institutions that confine disproportionate numbers of African Americans. After more than a decade of research, the celebrated scholar and activist Mab Segrest locates the deep historical roots of this startling fact, turning her sights on a long-forgotten cauldron of racial ideology: the state mental asylum system in which psychiatry was born and whose influences extend into our troubled present.

The Covid-19 pandemic was the most devastating natural event of the last century, killing more than 7 million people around the globe, straining the fabric of societies internationally, and shaking the foundations of the global economy. And yet, as horrifying as the experience was, Covid-19 was not actually “the Big One” — the dreaded potential pandemic that haunts the nightmares of epidemiologists and public health officials everywhere, and which will alter life across the world on every meaningful level unless we are ready to deal with it.

Despite billions of dollars invested in medical research and technological breakthroughs in American healthcare made to prolong and improve the lives of patients, a devastating statistic remains. Two thirds of Americans die in healthcare institutions tethered to machines and tubes at bankrupting costs, despite research that shows 80 percent of Americans would prefer to spend their last days in their homes surrounded by loved ones.

Health care as it stands today needs to be re-imagined. Redefining the Boundaries of Medicine by Paul Cerrato and Dr. John Halamka challenges the profession to renegotiate its priorities and address the fact that it’s become timid and reluctant to explore new care delivery models. The guiding premise of this book is that rethinking and reimagining the way medicine is practiced in the 21st century will improve health outcomes, and that technology is central to this transformation.

When Abortion Was a Crime is the must-listen book on abortion history. Originally published ahead of the thirtieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, this award-winning study was the first to examine the entire period during which abortion was illegal in the United States, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century and ending with that monumental case in 1973. When Abortion Was a Crime is filled with intimate stories and nuanced analysis, demonstrating how abortion was criminalized and policed—and how millions of women sought abortions regardless of the law.