In the United States, the soaring cost of health care has become an economic drag and a political flashpoint. Moreover, although the country's medical spending is higher than that of any other nation, health outcomes are no better than elsewhere, and in some cases are even worse. In The Quality Cure, renowned health care economist and former Obama advisor David Cutler offers an accessible and incisive account of the issues and their causes, as well as a road map for the future of health care reform—one that shows how information technology, realigned payment systems, and value-focused organizations together have the power to resolve this seemingly intractable problem and transform the US health care system into one that is affordable, efficient, and effective.
In the United States, the soaring cost of health care has become an economic drag and a political flashpoint. Moreover, although the country's medical spending is higher than that of any other nation, health outcomes are no better than elsewhere, and in some cases are even worse. In The Quality Cure, renowned health care economist and former Obama advisor David Cutler offers an accessible and incisive account of the issues and their causes, as well as a road map for the future of health care reform—one that shows how information technology, realigned payment systems, and value-focused organizations together have the power to resolve this seemingly intractable problem and transform the US health care system into one that is affordable, efficient, and effective.
Second in a series of publications from the Institute of Medicine's Quality of Health Care in America project Today's health care providers have more research findings and more technology available to them than ever before. Yet recent reports have raised serious doubts about the quality of health care in America. Crossing the Quality Chasm makes an urgent call for fundamental change to close the quality gap. This book recommends a sweeping redesign of the American health care system and provides overarching principles for specific direction for policymakers, health care leaders, clinicians, regulators, purchasers, and others. In this comprehensive volume the committee offers: A set of performance expectations for the 21st century health care system. A set of 10 new rules to guide patient-clinician relationships. A suggested organizing framework to better align the incentives inherent in payment and accountability with improvements in quality. Key steps to promote evidence-based practice and strengthen clinical information systems. Analyzing health care organizations as complex systems, Crossing the Quality Chasm also documents the causes of the quality gap, identifies current practices that impede quality care, and explores how systems approaches can be used to implement change.
What’s the Most Important Fact About the Heathcare Crisis? That We Already Know the Cure! Whole Foods Markets, the State of Indiana, and innovators around the world have used forgotten American ideas to slash healthcare costs by 75 percent while simultaneously delivering true universal access, coverage for preexisting conditions, and an ironclad safety net. Economics for Dummies author Sean Flynn explains that simple things—like price tags, competition, and plentiful health savings contributions—crush costs while granting everyone equal access to the world’s best healthcare services.
Offers an innovative plan to eliminate inequalities in American health care and save the lives they endanger Over 84,000 black and brown lives are needlessly lost each year due to health disparities: the unfair, unjust, and avoidable differences between the quality and quantity of health care provided to Americans who are members of racial and ethnic minorities and care provided to whites. Health disparities have remained stubbornly entrenched in the American health care system—and in Just Medicine Dayna Bowen Matthew finds that they principally arise from unconscious racial and ethnic biases held by physicians, institutional providers, and their patients. Implicit bias is the single most important determinant of health and health care disparities. Because we have missed this fact, the money we spend on training providers to become culturally competent, expanding wellness education programs and community health centers, and even expanding access to health insurance will have only a modest effect on reducing health disparities. We will continue to utterly fail in the effort to eradicate health disparities unless we enact strong, evidence-based legal remedies that accurately address implicit and unintentional forms of discrimination, to replace the weak, tepid, and largely irrelevant legal remedies currently available. Our continued failure to fashion an effective response that purges the effects of implicit bias from American health care, Matthew argues, is unjust and morally untenable. In this book, she unites medical, neuroscience, psychology, and sociology research on implicit bias and health disparities with her own expertise in civil rights and constitutional law. In a time when the health of the entire nation is at risk, it is essential to confront the issues keeping the health care system from providing equal treatment to all.
LOS ANGELES TIMES AND PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BESTSELLER • The powerful memoir of a young doctor and former college athlete diagnosed with a rare disease who spearheaded the search for a cure—and became a champion for a new approach to medical research. “A wonderful and moving chronicle of a doctor’s relentless pursuit, this book serves both patients and physicians in demystifying the science that lies behind medicine.”—Siddhartha Mukherjee, New York Times bestselling author of The Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene David Fajgenbaum, a former Georgetown quarterback, was nicknamed the Beast in medical school, where he was also known for his unmatched mental stamina. But things changed dramatically when he began suffering from inexplicable fatigue. In a matter of weeks, his organs were failing and he was read his last rites. Doctors were baffled by his condition, which they had yet to even diagnose. Floating in and out of consciousness, Fajgenbaum prayed for a second chance, the equivalent of a dramatic play to second the game into overtime. Miraculously, Fajgenbaum survived—only to endure repeated near-death relapses from what would eventually be identified as a form of Castleman disease, an extremely deadly and rare condition that acts like a cross between cancer and an autoimmune disorder. When he relapsed while on the only drug in development and realized that the medical community was unlikely to make progress in time to save his life, Fajgenbaum turned his desperate hope for a cure into concrete action: Between hospitalizations he studied his own charts and tested his own blood samples, looking for clues that could unlock a new treatment. With the help of family, friends, and mentors, he also reached out to other Castleman disease patients and physicians, and eventually came up with an ambitious plan to crowdsource the most promising research questions and recruit world-class researchers to tackle them. Instead of waiting for the scientific stars to align, he would attempt to align them himself. More than five years later and now married to his college sweetheart, Fajgenbaum has seen his hard work pay off: A treatment he identified has induced a tentative remission and his novel approach to collaborative scientific inquiry has become a blueprint for advancing rare disease research. His incredible story demonstrates the potency of hope, and what can happen when the forces of determination, love, family, faith, and serendipity collide. Praise for Chasing My Cure “A page-turning chronicle of living, nearly dying, and discovering what it really means to be invincible in hope.”—Angela Duckworth, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Grit “[A] remarkable memoir . . . Fajgenbaum writes lucidly and movingly . . . Fajgenbaum’s stirring account of his illness will inspire readers.”—Publishers Weekly
Potent Medicine could be the most important book on transforming healthcare ever published. Why? Because John Toussaint, MD, has dedicated his career to taking action that will leave our children with a better healthcare system than we inherited. This book is written for patients, insurance companies, policy-makers and those who work in a hospital or health system. Dr Toussaint has identified actions each group needs to take to make improvements to the system. For example true transparency means using words like death and risk and error. A patient evaluating a hospital for heart surgery needs to research a few simple measures of quality. * Number of medical errors committed in a hospital yesterday, shown both as a number and a historical trend * Number of surgical infections last month * Number of people who come in with chest pains and die * Percentage of people requiring this surgery who died in the hospital, and how many died within the last six months * Average number of days to a full recovery Potent Medicine is the compelling follow-up to Dr Toussaints first book, On the Mend. The stories highlight the tragic consequences that occur when medical teams do not follow a patients progress and just pass them through the system. It offers practical advice from Wisconsins collaborative efforts to transform healthcare and deliver better patient value and is focused on these 3 elements: * Delivery of care designed around the patient - using lean principles and methods to deliver care focused on patient needs * Transparency of treatment quality and cost - making healthcare outcomes public for everyone * Payment for outcome - move away from fee-for-service to a system that pays based on quality and efficient care Potent Medicine highlights the steps to achieving a quality healthcare system.
British Psychology Society Textbook of the Year 2020 Why do people who are more socially connected live longer and have better health than those who are socially isolated? Why are social ties at least as good for your health as not smoking, having a good diet, and taking regular exercise? Why is treatment more effective when there is an alliance between therapist and client? Until now, researchers and practitioners have lacked a strong theoretical foundation for answering such questions. This ground-breaking book fills this gap by showing how social identity processes are key to understanding and effectively managing a broad range of health-related problems. Integrating a wealth of evidence that the authors and colleagues around the world have built up over the last decade, The New Psychology of Health provides a powerful framework for reconceptualising the psychological dimensions of a range of conditions – including stress, trauma, ageing, depression, addiction, eating behaviour, brain injury, and pain. Alongside reviews of current approaches to these various issues, each chapter provides an in-depth analysis of the ways in which theory and practice can be enriched by attention to social identity processes. Here the authors show not only how an array of social and structural factors shape health outcomes through their impact on group life, but also how this analysis can be harnessed to promote the delivery of ‘social cures’ in a range of fields. This is a must-have volume for service providers, practitioners, students, and researchers working in a wide range of disciplines and fields, and will also be essential reading for anyone whose goal it is to improve the health and well-being of people and communities in their care.
