The New York City Times Science Bestseller from Robert Wachter, Modern Healthcare’s # 1 Many Influential Physician-Executive in the US While modern medication produces wonders, it also delivers care that is frequently unsafe, undependable, unfulfilling, and impossibly expensive. For the past few years, innovation has been touted as the remedy for all of health care’s ills. But medication stubbornly withstood computerization– until now. Over the previous 5 years, thanks mostly to billions of dollars in federal incentives, health care has actually finally gone digital. Once clinicians began utilizing computers to actually provide care, it dawned on them that something was deeply wrong. Why were medical professionals no longer making eye contact with their patients? How could among America’s leading hospitals give a teenager a 39- fold overdose of a typical antibiotic, in spite of a modern electronic prescribing system? How could a hiring ad for doctors tout the absence of an electronic medical record as a significant selling point? Logically enough, we’ve pinned the issues on clunky software application, flawed applications, absurd policies, and bad karma. It was all of those things, but it was also something far more complex. And far more interesting … Composed with a rare combination of compelling stories and hard-hitting analysis by one of the nation’s most thoughtful doctors, The Digital Physician takes a look at health care at the dawn of its computer age. It tackles the tough questions, from how innovation is changing care at the bedside to whether government intervention has been useful or harmful. And it does so with clearness, insight, humor, and empathy. Ultimately, it is a hopeful story. “We need to recognize that computer systems in healthcare do not just change my medical professional’s scrawl with Helvetica 12,” composes the author Dr. Robert Wachter. “Instead, they transform the work, the people who do it, and their relationships with each other and with patients … Sure, we need to have thought of this faster. However it’s not too late to get it right.” This captivating book provides the prescription for getting it right, making it necessary reading for everybody– client and company alike– who appreciates our health care system.
Comments
Post a Comment