This provocative appraisal unpacks commonly held beliefs about healthcare management and replaces them with practical strategies and realistic policy goals. Using Henry Mintzberg’s “Myths of Healthcare” as a springboard, it reveals management practices that undermine care delivery, explores their cultural and corporate origins, and details how they may be reversed through changes in management strategy, organization, scale, and style. Tackling conventional wisdom about decision-making, cost-effectiveness, service quality, and equity, contributors fine-tune concepts of mission and vision by promoting collaboration, engagement, and common sense. The book’s multidisciplinary panel of experts analyzes the most popular healthcare management “myths,” among them: · The healthcare system is failing. · The healthcare system can be fixed through social engineering. · Healthcare institutions can be fixed by bringing in the heroic leader. · The healthcare system can be fixed by treating it more as a business. · Healthcare is rightly left to the private sector, for the sake of efficiency. The Myths of Health Care speaks to a large, diverse audience: scholars of all levels interested in the research in health policy and management, graduate and under-graduate students attending courses in leadership and management of public sector organization, and practitioners in the field of health care.

With a focus on reframing the management and organization of healthcare, this thoughtful resource claims that care, cure, control, and community have to work together, within healthcare institutions and across them, to deliver quantity, quality, and equality simultaneously. --

Proof that high health care spending is linked directly to poverty. In Poverty and the Myths of Health Care Reform, Dr. Richard (Buz) Cooper argues that US poverty and high health care spending are inextricably entwined. Our nation's health care system bears a financial burden that is greater than in any other developed country in large part because impoverished patients use more health care, driving up costs across the board. Drawing on decades of research, Dr. Cooper illuminates the geographic patterns of poverty, wealth, and health care utilization that exist across neighborhoods, regions, and states—and among countries. He chronicles the historical threads that have led to such differences, examines the approaches that have been taken to combat poverty throughout US history, and analyzes the impact that structural changes now envisioned for clinical practice are likely to have. His research reveals that ignoring the impact of low income on health care utilization while blaming rising costs on waste, inefficiency, and unnecessary care has led policy makers to reshape clinical practice in ways that impede providers who care for the poor. The first book to address the fundamental nexus that binds poverty and income inequality to soaring health care utilization and spending, Poverty and the Myths of Health Care Reform is a must-read for medical professionals, public health scholars, politicians, and anyone concerned with the heavy burden of inequality on the health of Americans.

Despite intense political focus and debate for the past 10 years, Americans remain deeply worried about the availability and affordability of health care for themselves and their families. In clear and accessible prose, journalist Ryan Holeywell and medical doctor and health policy expert Arthur Garson provide Americans with the tools we need to have an honest, unbiased view of the state of health care policy in America. By fact checking 20 enduring health care myths they move the debate beyond Obamacare v. repeal and replace and give citizens the tools they need to evaluate the major policy issues confronting our health care system.

Do you know what’s really good for you? In this age of countless miracle cures, it’s vital to separate the myths that endanger your health from the medical facts you need. FACT: Unfiltered coffee can clog your arteries. FACT: Donating blood may lower your risk of heart disease. FACT: You don’t really need eight glasses of water a day. FACT: Coughing won’t help if you’re having a heart attack. (But aspirin will!) We’ve become a nation of cyberchondriacs, diagnosing ourselves with false information and half-truths found on sketchy websites. In Medical Myths That Can Kill You, Dr. Nancy Snyderman, chief medical editor for NBC News, provides clear, practical, scientifically proven advice that can lead you to a healthier, happier life. Discover the simple, everyday things that affect well-being, and get the information you need to revitalize your body, maintain your longevity, manage your care, and possibly even save a life–yours.

The American health care system is terminally ill. It is astonishingly expensive, remarkably variable in quality, and incapable of stemming the rising tide of chronic illness in our population. Yet, the majority of Americans believe it is the best system in the world and cling to the belief that, far from ailing, it delivers care superior to those of countries across the globe. The system has obliged us by providing an elaborate set of myths and misconceptions about American health care that significantly shape our beliefs. These myths keep us blissfully ignorant about the true quality, safety, and value of the care we receive. This ignorance has a price: it leads us to draw erroneous conclusions about our conditions, fail to properly evaluate potential treatment options, and rarely question our providers’ competency. The Myths of Modern Medicine looks at the real issues contributing to the dysfunction of our healthcare system and how these issues affect the care we receive. The book, based upon John Leifer’s 30 years of immersion in the healthcare industry, challenges some of our most commonly held misperceptions about this vitally important industry. Leifer strips away the elaborately constructed myths that conceal the ugly underbelly of healthcare and lays bare the truth about an industry that serves special interest groups far better than it serves its patients. A survival guide for anyone entering the healthcare system, this timely work helps consumers better research provider competency; ask the right questions to evaluate potential treatment options; and communicate the information that will help yield the right treatment decisions. Several studies have shown patients today have only about a 50 percent chance of getting the generally accepted best treatment for their conditions. This book helps consumers increase these odds with step-by-step directions on how to interact more productively with their doctors and become true partners in making what may be the most crucial decisions of their lives.

A fascinating survey of the entire history of tall tales, folklore, and mythology in the United States from earliest times to the present, including stories and myths from the modern era that have become an essential part of contemporary popular culture. Folklore has been a part of American culture for as long as humans have inhabited North America, and increasingly formed an intrinsic part of American culture as diverse peoples from Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceania arrived. In modern times, folklore and tall tales experienced a rejuvenation with the emergence of urban legends and the growing popularity of science fiction and conspiracy theories, with mass media such as comic books, television, and films contributing to the retelling of old myths. This multi-volume encyclopedia will teach readers the central myths and legends that have formed American culture since its earliest years of settlement. Its entries provide a fascinating glimpse into the collective American imagination over the past 400 years through the stories that have shaped it. Organized alphabetically, the coverage includes Native American creation myths, "tall tales" like George Washington chopping down his father's cherry tree and the adventures of "King of the Wild Frontier" Davy Crockett, through to today's "urban myths." Each entry explains the myth or legend and its importance and provides detailed information about the people and events involved. Each entry also includes a short bibliography that will direct students or interested general readers toward other sources for further investigation. Special attention is paid to African American folklore, Asian American folklore, and the folklore of other traditions that are often overlooked or marginalized in other studies of the topic.

This book questions whether technologies are the rational, tangible, scientific, forward-thinking, neutral objects they are so often perceived to be, exploring instead how powerful, mythic ideas about technologies drive our social understanding and our expectations of them. Against a rising tide of information, we encounter significant technological, scientific, and medical advances which promise to create an educated, humane, and equal world. This book explores that promise, deconstructing technologies to conclude that though they do afford us significant and empowering advances, they remain largely cloaked in mystery, and often promise more than they can deliver. Contributors from diverse intellectual backgrounds and political and epistemological stances - spanning sociology and psychosocial investigations, innovation studies, and scientists - combine philosophical inquiry and empirical case studies to create a book which is at once provocative, innovative, and exciting in the challenges it poses.

This book sets out a philosophical basis for person-centred healthcare, primarily using work by Heidegger and Gadamer, but drawing on ideas derived from Aristotle and process philosophy, in order to show how practice can be improved and how examples of person-centred practice can be transferred between individuals and institutions involved in the commissioning and provision of healthcare. By providing an underlying architectonic, this work will help to enable practitioners to understand the benefits of person-centred healthcare practice in promoting autonomy in those who are suffering from chronic and other illnesses. The text takes a phenomenological approach to healthcare because it offers a rich and subtle way of thinking about how we know what we know, and this applies to our knowledge and understanding of how healthcare works just as much as it does to all other kinds of knowledge. For those in clinical practice, this book provides a guide to the thinking behind person-centred healthcare.

Directed specifically at the practicing marketing executive, Cases and Select Readings in Health Care Marketing integrates understandable explanations of marketing concepts, articles selected for topical timeliness and pragmatic value, and case studies illustrating the detail and complexity of market decisions faced by today’s health care and human services marketing professional. Each chapter of this landmark volume includes a brief but thorough presentation of one conceptual area of marketing, which is then evaluated, analyzed, or demonstrated in selected articles written by prestigious and successful members of the marketing profession. Finally, a variety of extensive case studies follow which have been gathered to demonstrate further the service marketing profession at work. Many of these excellent cases were prepared especially for this volume and represent path-breaking treatments of such topics as health care marketing auditing, psychographic analysis, pricing in alternative delivery systems, promoting a public health service, and marketing planning for private colleges. Special offer from the editors: Buy Cases and Select Readings in Health Care Marketing and the authors will guarantee you a free written response--up to three pages--to your first inquiry about marketing your own organization!