ABOUT THIS BOOK This book is written by an insider. A hospital administrator and practitioner who participated firsthand in laying the foundation for today's collapsing heath care system. A practitioner who then went on to make radical changes in the way he practiced his profession and his philosophy of health care delivery. A practitioner who is now hell-bent on making radical changes in this disastrous health care system he helped to create 30 years ago. This book is an insider's look at the sequence of events and decisions that led to the demise of our health care system. This book is designed to educate you to:

This book is designed to enhance suitable interaction between the patient and the family physician. Worldwide shortage of physicians, limits the available time that can be assigned to each client during an office visit. The primary physician usually gives only about 10 minutes for each appointment. It is essential for a patient to present problems in details, accurately, chronologically and logically, within 2 to 3 minutes. The doctor will then afford the time, to evaluate the condition; perform a physical examination; organize suitable tests; formulate, explain the diagnosis and management, or arrange for appropriate specialist referrals.
Attempts are also made in this book to elucidate the actions that a doctor may normally take for various common situations. If such actions are not taken, the patient should know the reasons, or consider negotiating for the needed actions to be taken. Obviously, in a book of this size, not all conditions are covered. By giving ample examples and principles, it is hoped that the skill in applying the same principles to new situation may be developed. The book is not intended to be an encompassing medical text, reference for first aid, or coverage for situations requiring urgent hospital care. It is strictly designed for handling that vital 10 minutes in the doctor's office. People, who are already motivated to take an active interest in their health issues, by looking up medical information from texts and the internet, will find this book informative and useful. The conscientious doctors will serve the patients better, knowing the clients' rightful expectation.

All across Eastern Europe, health services plunged into crisis in the 1990s. Steep cuts in budgets, training and investment and, in some cases, official disinterest, created a pervasive system failure that has had terrible consequences, for patients and their families, for communities, and for those who have been required to work in the many parts of health services. Based on research conducted by the ILO Socio-Economic Security Programme and Public Services International, the book paints a vivid picture of the dedication and professionalism of health-care staff in worsening conditions, in which they have continued to work and have tried to maintain standards despite personal hardships.

Experienced family doctor Ray Strand writes his patients prescriptions every week, but he also believes that prescribing drugs should be a last resort in most medical cases-not a first choice. In Death by Prescription he provides simple guidelines to help readers protect themselves and their families from suffering adverse reactions to prescription medication.

The rapid deterioration of the American health-care system, and the debate about what to do about it, is generating a maelstrom of news stories, magazine articles, and books. But the average person finds it difficult to make sense of this blizzard of information. Because the health-care system is large and complex, and because the symptoms of its decline are numerous, comprehensive reports about the health-care crisis are extremely rare. Comprehensive reports in everyday language are nonexistent. The Health-Care Mess was written to fill that void. It assumes the reader knows nothing about health policy. As Kip Sullivan puts it, The Health-Care Mess is the book he wishes someone had given to him in 1986 when he, a community organizer, jumped into the cold, choppy waters of the health-care reform debate. At that time, he had no training in health policy. But in the course of studying the health-care system and explaining its problems to thousands of people, he discovered that health policy is not only accessible but fascinating. The book resembles a textbook in that it treats a complex subject comprehensively, and it is meticulously documented. But it doesn't read like a textbook. The author speaks in an informal, conversational style, he makes minimal use of jargon, and explains what jargon he has to use. And he is not coy about expressing his opinions. He believes the health-care reform debate has been unduly influenced by big corporations, especially those in the insurance and drug industries. He concludes that the health-care crisis will be solved only when America adopts a "Medicare-for-all" system, a system in which universal coverage is implemented by expanding a reformed Medicareprogram to all Americans. The Health-Care Mess explains the debate about what's wrong with the health-care system, and how to fix it, in terms everyone can understand.

The basic health care system in the United States is not working and must be fixed. The cost of a new, effective system of health care delivery would be instead of rather than in addition to what the US population is now paying for an inadequate, incomplete system. We must put the fiscal responsibility for health care delivery on the medical care sector that makes the decisions on what medications, what procedures and who gets treatment and when, that is, the providers of care, mostly the doctors. By doing this we can correct the more than fifty percent overpayment and misuse of funds currently in vogue. The book deals with the concept of the possibility of eventual coverage of everyone through the Medicare system as the current population ages. It explains the leverage that that single payer universal system such as Medicare, can generate to change the incentives for the providers of care resulting in a reduction of the overall cost. It also sets forth the concept of choice for the patient, the allocation of resources, and the restructuring of the medical education system as well as the recruitment and training of providers. Other problems such as organizational development, provider groups, malpractice, reinsurance through a universal system and other solutions are also dealt with. Today 45 million Americans have no health care coverage, while approximately 50 million are under insured due to high deductibles and co-payments. Many who are eligible for Medicare, federal health care insurance for the aged and Medicaid, federal health care for the poor, may be without coverage due to lack of access to services in the areas that they live. Practical solutions to these problems areaddressed. Robert Gumbiner, MD, with more than 40 years experience in the health care field as a practicing physician, a manager and a force in medical management education, derives much of his experience from successfully developing and managing one of the largest managed care companies in the United States for over 30 years. Drawing on this extensive management experience as well as years of studying health care systems around the world, Robert Gumbiner debunks the myths held by opponents to national universal health care and capitated prepayment. His development of the first capitated prepayment plan for Medical in the 60's in California and first contract for prepayment Medicare on the West Coast in the 80's gave credibility to his ideas that succeeded in reducing health care costs. He shows step-by-step how we arrived at our current dysfunctional system and argues persuasively how we have been misled by special interests in the medical/industrial complex into thinking a health care system funded through the government and managed for effective utilization will eliminate choice. In the final analysis the book's major theme is that the cost of a complete comprehensive system is "instead of and not in addition" to what we are currently paying and how to go about instituting such a system. It offers solutions that have been developed by the author throughout his long career in managing health care delivery systems. It is not a theoretical concept but based upon ideas, errors, successes and a logical, practical model.

In this three-hole-punched workbook/CD-ROM package, Huffman (nursing education, Motlow State Community College) offers a practical approach to understanding OBQI and disease management. She provides tools for applying outcome-based patient care using OASIS outcomes, OBQI, care pathways, and disease management. She also explains the links among pati

Herbal remedies and dietary supplements are becoming increasingly popular. In the United States, over $5 billion is spent on these over-the-counter remedies every year. While most are benign and pose very little harm to people who take them, there are a few remedies and supplements that have adverse or side effects that could cause problems. Herbal Remedies, Dietary Supplements, and Their Impact on Emergency Care is oriented toward healthcare providers whose patients may be using one or more remedies and supplements. The information covers commonly used remedies and supplements, including vitamins, providing information about their actions, uses, common doses, adverse effects, drug interactions, and key information needed while caring for the patient during an emergency. For example, garlic, ginkgo, and others can prolong bleeding, thus it is important to know that control of bleeding may be more difficult in an injured patient. The intent of the book is to provide a quick reference guide that can be carried in a pocket or jump kit providing immediate information to emergency care personnel. It is an essential guide for emergency department physicians and nurses as well as emergency medical services (EMS) paramedics and EMTs. Although it is oriented toward emergency care providers, this guide is helpful for anyone considering using these remedies and supplements. Information is provided in bullet format for ease of locating critical information without having to read through paragraphs of text.

Individuals with chronic pain suffer not only from the torment of physical pain, but also from a healthcare system that, through ignorance, arrogance, and greed, further abuses them. Written in plain English by pain specialists, Validate Your Pain Exposing the Chronic Pain Cover-Up (3rd Edition) tells the inside story of a healthcare system gone awry and of how individuals with chronic pain pay the price in terms of physical, emotional, and financial suffering. But it goes further. Validate Your Pain helps the reader to transcend validation and move toward empowerment and recovery from the bonds of chronic pain by providing practical, step-by-step advice for successfully maneuvering through the healthcare minefield. No other book takes on these important and controversial issues. Validate Your Pain does. ...I urge all pain patients and professionals to hear the message of Validate Your Pain This courageous book is right on target and shows the way to compassionate care of the future...NOW There is nothing else even close to this book on the market. ...Patti Wright, Leader and Founder, Fibromyalgia Friends Support Group Henderson, Nevada FMAngels3@aol. com

A practicing psychoanalyst offers one of the first books to help navigate the profound emotional challenges of caring for elderly parents in a strained parent-child relationship.

Home Health 101 is a concise guide to hiring and managing in home care givers. Dominic Ottaviano clearly points out step by step how to hire a care giver, protect yourself by selecting a payroll service, and manage the care giver once you have hired the best one possible. Home Health 101 will allow you to avoid many pitfalls in hiring and managing employees saving you time and money while finding the best care giver to fit your needs. Home Health 101 gives you all the tools you will need to determine the amount of care needing and the management skills needed to determine the best times for care to be given allowing maximum utilization of you money.

Part of a series designed to demystify healthcare, this pocket-sized guide to high blood pressure discusses what it is, which treatment can help, and how. Each section includes questions and answers.

"The Chicago Sun Times" praises ""Into the Blue" is Susan Edsall's fascinating chronicle of the fight to get her father back into his beloved Big Sky...an engagingly readable testament to an everyday courage....Salted with hilarious memories of Edsall family life, peppered with touching reminiscences of flight with her father, [Edsall] mixes the positive with the painful until it's not only palatable but also poignant."
Three years ago, Susan Edsall's father, a rebuilder and pilot of antique airplanes, suffered a devastating stroke that left him unable to read, write, speak, tell time, understand the alphabet---or fly. The doctors told Susan the best her family could hope for was that he would learn to play checkers. Susan knew if her dad couldn't fly, he'd just as soon not breathe, so she chose another path. Battling the pessimistic conclusion of the experts---and her own looming fears---she and her sister, Sharon, aka the Blister Sisters, decided to take matters into their own hands. With no medical training but double doses of determination, they bushwhacked their own rehab program and got their father back behind the controls of his beloved open-cockpit biplane and into the air.
Susan Edsall's "Into the Blue" is a powerful family memoir about two feisty sisters from Montana who bring their father back to life---and discover themselves in the process. Inspiring, gritty, and often hilarious, it's also the story of anyone who has ever fought back from a dire prognosis to pursue a cherished dream.

Ask Americans what concerns them most, and the answer invariably will be the cost and quality of their health care. That is, if they have coverage at all. And yet, aside from short-lived effort on behalf of universal health care by Hillary Clinton during the beginning of the Clinton administration, the average American has no idea what can be done. Though there have been numerous publications on health care reform over the last few years, most have been academically oriented, targeted to a professional audience, and too technical and confusing for the average person. Dr. Fouad Michael, a hugely successful physician, who retired at the peak of his career to work for health care reform, outlines clearly and concisely how our present system of health care operates, the reasons it doesn't work, and the best possible solution. This book speaks to the reader on a level and in language that he or she can understand. Dr. Michael brings a unique perspective to the problem with his bicultural knowledge, having worked in two different types of medical care systems, Egypt and the US. Back in Egypt, he experienced firsthand the socialist revolution of the sixties and studied and practiced medicine in a national health care system with all its flows and ambitions. He practiced medicine in the US for more than three decades and witnessed the transformation from the fee-for-service system to the managed care revolution. Over the years, his interest in health care reform developed hand in hand with his own experience. Dr. Michael takes the reader through the failings of the fee-for-service and the managed care systems, using countless examples of his own patients' experiences, ones that the reader will easily identify with. He then outlines the solution: a single payer system modeled on the five principles of the Canadian system, which would serve as a basis for a US model.

Today's HMOs come into a great deal of criticism, yet few people understand their inner workings. This book describes how they operate and why they elicit such criticism. Written with the general public in mind, it gives an overview of the current situation, a history of the HMO industry and how they function, how the federal government got involved, how and why the early models failed, how the large for-profit HMOs entered the picture and how they work, and their impact on the national health care scene. It also presents recommendations on what should be done to provide consumer protection. Finally, it gives users and potential users recommendations, and physicians and other health care provider's recommendations, before becoming involved with HMOs.

In 1999 Anne Morrow Lindbergh, the famed aviator and author, moved from her home in Connecticut to the farm in Vermont where her daughter, Reeve, and Reeve's family live. Mrs. Lindbergh was in her nineties and had been rendered nearly speechless years earlier by a series of small strokes that also left her frail and dependent on others for her care. As an accomplished author who had learned to write in part by reading her mother's many books, Reeve was deeply saddened and frustrated by her inability to communicate with her mother, a woman long recognized in her family and throughout the world as a gifted communicator.

No More Words is a moving and compassionate memoir of the final seventeen months of Reeve's mother's life. Reeve writes with great sensitivity and sympathy for her mother's plight, while also analyzing her own conflicting feelings. Anyone who has had to care for an elderly parent disabled by Alzheimer's or stroke will understand immediately the heartache and anguish Reeve suffered and will find comfort in her story.

According to the Alzheimer's Association, one in ten persons over sixty-five and nearly half of those over eighty-five have Alzheimer's disease. Today, 4 million Americans have Alzheimer's disease. In a national survey, 19 million Americans said they have a family member with the ailment, and 37 million said they knew someone who had it. But when Rosette Teitel found herself in the role of caregiver to her ailing husband, she could find no books that answered her practical needs: How do you give a 170-pound man a shower? How do you pick him up when he falls? What should you anticipate as the disease progresses? What support networks are available? When is it time to consider a nursing home and how do you find one?

While many Alzheimer's disease books focus on the disease and the patient, Teitel draws on her own experience -- as well as that of a clinical psychologist, a coordinator of an Alzheimer's program at a community center, members of the Alzheimer's Foundation, a research psychologist, an elder-law attorney, and a neurologist -- to tackle subjects rarely dealt with in other self-help books. Teitel covers topics such as managing the expenses of long-term care through Medicaid, estate planning, and preparing for the patient's death and the loss of someone whose daily survival has been at the center of one's existence. The chapters deal with background information on diagnosis, treatment, and the progression of the disease; the physical and emotional changes and resources involved with the day-to-day caregiving; support networks; nursing homes; finances; death of the patient; grief, mourning, and life after the patient's death; and interviews with children caring for parents withAlzheimer's disease. In addition, Teitel provides a helpful list of frequently asked questions, scheduling and memory aids, and websites where readers can find resources.