Healthcare Upside Down

Excerpt

Healthcare Upside Down is the title of a book I recently published (Springer). The title describes the catastrophic current state of United States healthcare, a system in which administration is on top and the patient on the bottom. This system is run on a business model, with the healing of the sick a trade commodity. The CEOs of the business “firms” (the term replacing the designations of hospital, clinic, and office) control the actions of the doctors, who are now part of the “staff or team,” that forms the committee of “providers,” who actually care for the “clients,” formerly patients. Ironically, based on business standards, United States healthcare is a failure because it provides second-rate outcomes at the highest percent of the Gross National Product (GNP) among all nations in the world. …