Great Health Care


Book Description

Great Health Care is enlightening and entertaining. It’s a must read for physicians, patients, health policymakers and administrators, and the interested public---anyone who wants to understand what great health care is, and how we might build it together. The authors share their stories and motivations and the methods they have used to transform care for their own patients within their own practices and health systems. They thoughtfully explore how we got into this mess, how we can get out of it, and the barriers to making it happen. “It is not only the impact of chronic diseases on our health and economy that draws us to this subject. It is the intriguing and rewarding potential for improving the status quo through redesigning how chronic disease care is provided and paid for.” (Timothy Harrington, MD) "You can't do things differently until you see things differently." (Eric Newman, MD) “We start people on the road to recovery, but the 12 weeks of cardiac rehabilitation is just the warm-up period. The really important part is what happens afterward.” (Richard Lueker, MD, Beth McCormick, MS) “We believe the extra-ordinary efforts of our program coordinators are key to our clients’ wellbeing and our unusually low readmission rate.” (Kathi Farrell, RN, BSN, PHN, Kathleen Sullivan, RN, MSN) “In real life, we are not usually given the chance to have a do-over. But we are given the chance to continuously improve. With the right skill sets, and the right partners, we can transform.” (Eric Newman, MD)




Which Country Has the World's Best Health Care?


Book Description

The preeminent doctor and bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel is repeatedly asked one question: Which country has the best healthcare? He set off to find an answer. The US spends more than any other nation, nearly $4 trillion, on healthcare. Yet, for all that expense, the US is not ranked #1 -- not even close. In Which Country Has the World's Best Healthcare? Ezekiel Emanuel profiles eleven of the world's healthcare systems in pursuit of the best or at least where excellence can be found. Using a unique comparative structure, the book allows healthcare professionals, patients, and policymakers alike to know which systems perform well, and why, and which face endemic problems. From Taiwan to Germany, Australia to Switzerland, the most inventive healthcare providers tackle a global set of challenges -- in pursuit of the best healthcare in the world.




Best Care at Lower Cost


Book Description

America's health care system has become too complex and costly to continue business as usual. Best Care at Lower Cost explains that inefficiencies, an overwhelming amount of data, and other economic and quality barriers hinder progress in improving health and threaten the nation's economic stability and global competitiveness. According to this report, the knowledge and tools exist to put the health system on the right course to achieve continuous improvement and better quality care at a lower cost. The costs of the system's current inefficiency underscore the urgent need for a systemwide transformation. About 30 percent of health spending in 2009-roughly $750 billion-was wasted on unnecessary services, excessive administrative costs, fraud, and other problems. Moreover, inefficiencies cause needless suffering. By one estimate, roughly 75,000 deaths might have been averted in 2005 if every state had delivered care at the quality level of the best performing state. This report states that the way health care providers currently train, practice, and learn new information cannot keep pace with the flood of research discoveries and technological advances. About 75 million Americans have more than one chronic condition, requiring coordination among multiple specialists and therapies, which can increase the potential for miscommunication, misdiagnosis, potentially conflicting interventions, and dangerous drug interactions. Best Care at Lower Cost emphasizes that a better use of data is a critical element of a continuously improving health system, such as mobile technologies and electronic health records that offer significant potential to capture and share health data better. In order for this to occur, the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, IT developers, and standard-setting organizations should ensure that these systems are robust and interoperable. Clinicians and care organizations should fully adopt these technologies, and patients should be encouraged to use tools, such as personal health information portals, to actively engage in their care. This book is a call to action that will guide health care providers; administrators; caregivers; policy makers; health professionals; federal, state, and local government agencies; private and public health organizations; and educational institutions.




Best Care Anywhere


Book Description

Phillip Longman tells the amazing story of the turnaround of the Department of Veterans Affairs health-care system from a dysfunctional, scandal-prone bureaucracy into the benchmark for high-quality medicine in the United States. Best Care Anywhere shows that vast swaths of what we think we know about health, health care, and medical economics are just plain wrong. And the book demonstrates how this extraordinarily cost-effective model, which has proven to be highly popular with veterans, can be made available to everyone. New to this edition is an analysis of how the shortcomings of both so-called Obamacare and Republican plans to privatize Medicare reinforce the need for applying the lessons of the VA. Also included are completely updated statistics and research, as well as examples of how the private sector is already beginning to learn from the VA's example.




Coverage Matters


Book Description

Roughly 40 million Americans have no health insurance, private or public, and the number has grown steadily over the past 25 years. Who are these children, women, and men, and why do they lack coverage for essential health care services? How does the system of insurance coverage in the U.S. operate, and where does it fail? The first of six Institute of Medicine reports that will examine in detail the consequences of having a large uninsured population, Coverage Matters: Insurance and Health Care, explores the myths and realities of who is uninsured, identifies social, economic, and policy factors that contribute to the situation, and describes the likelihood faced by members of various population groups of being uninsured. It serves as a guide to a broad range of issues related to the lack of insurance coverage in America and provides background data of use to policy makers and health services researchers.




Your Money Or Your Life


Book Description

Publisher Description




Get What's Yours


Book Description

Learn the secrets to maximizing your Social Security benefits and earn up to thousands of dollars more each year with expert advice that you can't get anywhere else. Want to know how to navigate the forbidding maze of Social Security and emerge with the highest possible benefits? You could try reading all 2,728 rules of the Social Security system (and the thousands of explanations of these rules), but Kotlikoff, Moeller, and Solman explain Social Security benefits in an easy to understand and user-friendly style. What you don't know can seriously hurt you: wrong decisions about which Social Security benefits to apply for cost some individual retirees tens of thousands of dollars in lost income every year. How many retirees or those nearing retirement know about such Social Security options as file and suspend (apply for benefits and then don't take them)? Or start stop start (start benefits, stop them, then re-start them)? Or-just as important-when and how to use these techniques? Get What's Yours covers the most frequent benefit scenarios faced by married retired couples, by divorced retirees, by widows and widowers, among others. It explains what to do if you're a retired parent of dependent children, disabled, or an eligible beneficiary who continues to work, and how to plan wisely before retirement. It addresses the tax consequences of your choices, as well as the financial implications for other investments. Many personal finance books briefly address Social Security, but none offers the thorough, authoritative, yet conversational analysis found here. You've paid all your working life for these benefits. Now, get what's yours.




Care Without Coverage


Book Description

Many Americans believe that people who lack health insurance somehow get the care they really need. Care Without Coverage examines the real consequences for adults who lack health insurance. The study presents findings in the areas of prevention and screening, cancer, chronic illness, hospital-based care, and general health status. The committee looked at the consequences of being uninsured for people suffering from cancer, diabetes, HIV infection and AIDS, heart and kidney disease, mental illness, traumatic injuries, and heart attacks. It focused on the roughly 30 million-one in seven-working-age Americans without health insurance. This group does not include the population over 65 that is covered by Medicare or the nearly 10 million children who are uninsured in this country. The main findings of the report are that working-age Americans without health insurance are more likely to receive too little medical care and receive it too late; be sicker and die sooner; and receive poorer care when they are in the hospital, even for acute situations like a motor vehicle crash.




Health-Care Utilization as a Proxy in Disability Determination


Book Description

The Social Security Administration (SSA) administers two programs that provide benefits based on disability: the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program and the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program. This report analyzes health care utilizations as they relate to impairment severity and SSA's definition of disability. Health Care Utilization as a Proxy in Disability Determination identifies types of utilizations that might be good proxies for "listing-level" severity; that is, what represents an impairment, or combination of impairments, that are severe enough to prevent a person from doing any gainful activity, regardless of age, education, or work experience.




10 Excellent Reasons for National Health Care


Book Description

The United States spends twice as much as other industrialised nations on health care, yet performs poorly in comparison and still leaves 46 million citizens without health coverage and millions more inadequately covered. Publishes in time for the 2008 US presidential elections and following on the heels of Michael Moore's Sicko, 10 Excellent Reasons for National Health Care offers powerful ammunition in favour of a fundamental change to American health care.