An informed argument for reworking the broken market†'based U.S. healthcare system by making cost and quality more transparent The United States has the most expensive healthcare system in the world. ...While policy makers have argued over who is at fault for this, the system has been quietly moving toward high†'deductible insurance plans that require patients to pay large amounts out of pocket before insurance kicks in. The idea behind this shift is that patients will become better consumers of healthcare when forced to pay for their medical expenses. Laying bare the perils of the current situation, Peter A. Ubel-a physician and behavioral scientist-notes that even when patients have time to shop around, healthcare costs remain largely opaque, difficult to access, and hard to compare. Arguing for a middle path between a market†'based and a completely free system, Ubel envisions more transparent, smarter healthcare plans that tie the prices of treatments to the value they provide so that people can afford to receive the care they deserve.
Affliction inaugurates a novel way of understanding the trajectories of health and disease in the context of poverty. Focusing on low-income neighborhoods in Delhi, it stitches together three ...different sets of issues. First, it examines the different trajectories of illness: What are the circumstances under which illness is absorbed within the normal and when does it exceed the normal putting resources, relationships, and even one's world into jeopardy? A second set of issues involves how different healers understand their own practices. The astonishing range of practitioners found in the local markets in the poor neighborhoods of Delhi shows how the magical and the technical are knotted together in the therapeutic experience of healers and patients. The book asks: What is expert knowledge? What is it that the practitioner knows and what does the patient know? How are these different forms of knowledge brought together in the clinical encounter, broadly defined? How does this event of everyday life bear the traces of larger policies at the national and global levels? Finally, the book interrogates the models of disease prevalence and global programming that emphasize surveillance over care and deflect attention away from the specificities of local worlds. Yet the analysis offered retains an openness to different ways of conceptualizing "what is happening" and stimulates a conversation between different disciplinary orientations to health, disease, and poverty. Most studies of health and disease focus on the encounter between patient and practitioner within the space of the clinic. This book instead privileges the networks of relations, institutions, and knowledge over which the experience of illness is dispersed. Instead of thinking of illness as an event set apart from everyday life, it shows the texture of everyday life, the political economy of neighborhoods, as well as the dark side of care. It helps us see how illness is bound by the contexts in which it occurs, while also showing how illness transcends these contexts to say something about the nature of everyday life and the making of subjects.
Oncology in Primary Care is for primary care clinicians who need practical and concise information on caring for their patients with cancer.
Written in an easy-to-browse format, chapters cover risk ...factors, prevention, screening, prognosis, and surveillance strategies-valuable information that helps primary care clinicians advise their patients regarding therapeutic and end-of-life decisions and become true partners in the care of their patients with cancer.
Each chapter also includes an abundance of figures and tables to help clinicians find quick answers to questions commonly encountered in the primary care setting. Plus, a companion website is available allowing easy accessibility to the content.
Despite a strong commitment to delivering quality health care, persistent problems involving medical errors and ineffective treatment continue to plague the industry. Many of these problems are the ...consequence of poor information and technology (IT) capabilities, and most importantly, the lack cognitive IT support. Clinicians spend a great deal of time sifting through large amounts of raw data, when, ideally, IT systems would place raw data into context with current medical knowledge to provide clinicians with computer models that depict the health status of the patient.Computational Technology for Effective Health Care advocates re-balancing the portfolio of investments in health care IT to place a greater emphasis on providing cognitive support for health care providers, patients, and family caregivers; observing proven principles for success in designing and implementing IT; and accelerating research related to health care in the computer and social sciences and in health/biomedical informatics.Health care professionals, patient safety advocates, as well as IT specialists and engineers, will find this book a useful tool in preparation for crossing the health care IT chasm.
Pills, power, and policy Tobbell, Dominique A
2012., 20120225, 2011, 2011-12-07, 20120101, Letnik:
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Since the 1950s, the American pharmaceutical industry has been heavily criticized for its profit levels, the high cost of prescription drugs, drug safety problems, and more, yet it has, together with ...the medical profession, staunchly and successfully opposed regulation.Pills, Power, and Policyoffers a lucid history of how the American drug industry and key sectors of the medical profession came to be allies against pharmaceutical reform. It details the political strategies they have used to influence public opinion, shape legislative reform, and define the regulatory environment of prescription drugs. Untangling the complex relationships between drug companies, physicians, and academic researchers, the book provides essential historical context for understanding how corporate interests came to dominate American health care policy after World War II.
This study reviews aid flows to the health sector in Somalia over the period 2000-2006. In close collaboration with the Health Sector Committee of the Coordination of International Support to Somalis ...the authors collected quantitative and qualitative data from twenty-six international agencies operating in Somalia, including bilateral and multilateral donors.The paper reaches three main conclusions. First, aid financing to the health sector in Somalia has been constantly growing, reaching US 7-10 per capita in 2006. Although this is a considerable amount compared to other fragile states, it may still be insufficient to address the populations needs and to meet the high operational costs to work in Somalia. Secondly, contributions to the health sector could and should be more strategic. The focus on some vertical programs (e.g. HIV/AIDS and malaria) seems to have diverted attention away from other important programs (e.g. immunization and reproductive health) and from basic health system needs (infrastructure, human resources, etc.). The third conclusion is that more analytical work on health financing is needed to drive policy decisions in Somalia. Similarly to other fragile states, quality information on health sector financing is scanty, thus affecting the policy making process negatively.
In this book by the award-winning author of Just Healthcare, Norman Daniels develops a comprehensive theory of justice for health that answers three key questions: what is the special moral ...importance of health? When are health inequalities unjust? How can we meet health needs fairly when we cannot meet them all? Daniels' theory has implications for national and global health policy: can we meet health needs fairly in ageing societies? Or protect health in the workplace while respecting individual liberty? Or meet professional obligations and obligations of justice without conflict? When is an effort to reduce health disparities, or to set priorities in realising a human right to health, fair? What do richer, healthier societies owe poorer, sicker societies? Just Health: Meeting Health Needs Fairly explores the many ways that social justice is good for the health of populations in developed and developing countries.
Since 2013, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has embarked on a pioneering effort to advance a Culture of Health in which “everyone in our diverse society leads healthier lives now and for ...generations to come." To put the Culture of Health vision into action, RAND Health supported development of an action framework and measurement strategy. This report summarizes the stakeholder engagement efforts RAND used to inform this work.
What does it mean to be a “just” and “caring” society when we have only limited resources to meet unlimited health care needs? Do we believe that all lives are of equal value? Is human life ...priceless? Should a “just” and “caring” society refuse to put limits on health care spending? In Just Caring, Leonard Fleck reflects on the central moral and political challenges of health reform today. He cites the millions of Americans who go without health insurance, thousands of whom die prematurely, unable to afford the health care needed to save their lives. Fleck considers these deaths as contrary to our deepest social values, and makes a case for the necessity of health care rationing decisions. The core argument of this book is that no one has a moral right to impose rationing decisions on others if they are unwilling to impose those same rationing decisions on themselves in the same medical circumstances. Fleck argues we can make health care rationing fair, in ways that are mutually respectful, if we engage in honest rational democratic deliberation. Such civic engagement is rare in our society, but the alternative is endless destructive social controversy that is neither just nor caring.
