Health Care Delivery Books

The 36-Hour Day, 4th edition: A Family Guide to Caring for People with Alzheimer Disease, Other Dementias, and Memory Loss in Later Life (A Johns Hopkins Press Health Book)

Nancy L. Mace, Peter V. Rabins

Amazon Price: $14.25 List Price: $20.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: The Johns Hopkins University Press Amazon Marketplace: 40 new & used starting at $12.55

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Disorders & Diseases -> Alzheimer's Disease
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Personal Health -> Aging -> General
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Personal Health -> Aging -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 47 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A must read 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This is an excellent book. It is written in a warm and caring manner which is easy to understand. It is full of information not just for anyone dealing with a dementia patient, but for anybody who is caring for another person, (or who may think at some point they will). It covers subjects which apply to the caring of anyone who is ill and/or elderly, even if it is not dementia. I would recommend this book to anyone, before they are faced with the illness. I wish I'd read it sooner, but better late than never. Absolutely a great book, it should be in every library. I plan to buy 2 copies for my library, I will definitely NOT donate mine. I can't say enough good things about this book.

Editorial Review:

Revised in 2006 for its twenty-fifth anniversary, this best-selling book is the "bible" for families caring for people with Alzheimer disease, offering comfort and support to millions worldwide. In addition to the practical and compassionate guidance that have made The 36-Hour Day invaluable to caregivers, the fourth edition is the only edition currently available that includes new information on medical research and the delivery of care.

The new edition includes:

-new information on diagnostic evaluation-resources for families and adult children who care for people with dementia-updated legal and financial information-the latest information on nursing homes and other communal living arrangements-new information on research, medications, and the biological causes and effects of dementia

Also available in a large print edition

Praise for The 36-Hour Day:

Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure

Paul A. Offit

Amazon Price: $16.47 List Price: $24.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Columbia University Press Amazon Marketplace: 54 new & used starting at $12.47

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Personal Health -> Children's Health -> Autism & Asperger's Syndrome
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Personal Health -> General
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Personal Health -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 40 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

A London researcher was the first to assert that the combination measles-mumps-rubella vaccine known as MMR caused autism in children. Following this "discovery," a handful of parents declared that a mercury-containing preservative in several vaccines was responsible for the disease. If mercury caused autism, they reasoned, eliminating it from a child's system should treat the disorder. Consequently, a number of untested alternative therapies arose, and, most tragically, in one such treatment, a doctor injected a five-year-old autistic boy with a chemical in an effort to cleanse him of mercury, which stopped his heart instead.

Children with autism have been placed on stringent diets, subjected to high-temperature saunas, bathed in magnetic clay, asked to swallow digestive enzymes and activated charcoal, and injected with various combinations of vitamins, minerals, and acids. Instead of helping, these therapies can hurt those who are most vulnerable, and particularly in the case of autism, they undermine childhood vaccination programs that have saved millions of lives. An overwhelming body of scientific evidence clearly shows that childhood vaccines are safe and does not cause autism. Yet widespread fear of vaccines on the part of parents persists.

In this book, Paul A. Offit, a national expert on vaccines, challenges the modern-day false prophets who have so egregiously misled the public and exposes the opportunism of the lawyers, journalists, celebrities, and politicians who support them. Offit recounts the history of autism research and the exploitation of this tragic condition by advocates and zealots. He considers the manipulation of science in the popular media and the courtroom, and he explores why society is susceptible to the bad science and risky therapies put forward by many antivaccination activists.

The Edge of Medicine: The Technology That Will Change Our Lives

William Hanson

Amazon Price: $16.47 List Price: $24.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Palgrave Macmillan Amazon Marketplace: 36 new & used starting at $15.08

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Personal Health -> General
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Personal Health -> General AAS
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Experts agree that we are entering the Golden Age of Medicine, when our everyday experience of being ill and getting better will be more like science fiction than today’s routine trip to the doctor.

Bill Hanson, director of the surgical intensive care unit at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center and an inventor of medical technology, offers true-life and intensely intimate stories about the way biotechnology is changing people's lives.
• An electronic nose that detects infection, such as pneumonia, based on a person’s breath
• Robots with appendages that can feel their way around tissue, which will augment the hands of surgeons in the operating room
• Computer health wizards that will advise and prescribe through your home computer
• Computerized psychotherapists dispensing advice about emotional problems
• Telehealth software that serves as a monitoring nurse for difficult to manage chronic illnesses such as diabetes.
• Wheelchairs operated by reading electrical brainwaves for patients with severe neurological deterioration.

Bill Hanson describes the human genius that arrived at these amazing discoveries, and how innovators are working to take these feats to an even more technologically advanced level. And more importantly, he discusses what the human experience will be and how we can prepare ourselves for the moral and ethical challenges that these awesome changes will bring. This riveting and startling account will make us revise our expectations of our own mortality.

 

The 36-Hour Day: A Family Guide to Caring for Persons with Alzheimer Disease, Related Dementing Illnesses, and Memory Loss in Later Life

Nancy L. Mace, Peter V. Rabins MD

List Price: $15.95 By: The Johns Hopkins University Press Amazon Marketplace: 149 new & used starting at $0.01

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Disorders & Diseases -> Alzheimer's Disease
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Disorders & Diseases -> Nervous System
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 86 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

"I welcome with enthusiasm the third edition of this book for families and friends of patients with dementing illnesses. It has served well in its prior appearances and should accomplish even more with this edition." -- Paul R. McHugh, M.D., in the foreword

Through two editions, this best-selling book has remained the "bible" for families who are giving care to people with Alzheimer disease. The 36-Hour Day has offered comfort and support to millions of people in North America and, in translations and adapted editions, throughout the rest of the world. For this third edition, the authors have retained the structure, scope, and purpose of the original book, while thoroughly updating chapters to reflect the latest medical research and the current delivery of care.

Topics that have been added or extensively revised include: Updated terminology and statistics • New material on the evaluation of persons with dementia • Updated changes in laws on driving • A new section on hospice care • New information on assisted living facilities and financing care • Information on other types of dementia • The latest findings on eating and nutrition • New medical research in areas such as drugs, genetics, and diagnostic tests. The revised appendices include: New bibliographic references • websites • Updated addresses of associations and state offices.

Praise for previous editions:

"The best guide of its kind." -- Chicago Sun Times

"An excellent book for families who are caring for persons with dementia... A book that physicians can confidently recommend to the families of their patients." -- Journal of the American Medical Association

"Excellent guidance and clear information of a kind that the family needs... The authors offer the realistic advice that sometimes it is better to concede the patient's frailties than to try to do something about them, and that a compassionate sense of humor often helps." -- New York Times

"An excellent, practical manual for families and professionals involved in the care of persons with progressive illnesses... The book is specific and thought-provoking, and it will be helpful to anyone even remotely involved with an 'impaired' person... Highly recommended, especially for public and nursing libraries." -- Library Journal

" The 36-Hour Day has served its readers well. The revised edition should be even more useful both to family caregivers and professional health care providers." -- HMO Practice

"The reader who is familiar with the first edition will recognize the strengths that continue in the revised edition -- numerous case examples, practical advice, thoroughness of coverage, and communication of caring and humane attitudes while presenting information that may be sensitive and upsetting to families." -- Clinical Gerontologist

Healthcare, Guaranteed: A Simple, Secure Solution for America

Ezekiel J. Emanuel

Amazon Price: $10.17 List Price: $14.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: PublicAffairs Amazon Marketplace: 43 new & used starting at $8.50

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Personal Health -> General
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Personal Health -> General AAS
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

America spends more than any other developed nation on healthcare—$2.1 trillion in 2007 alone. But 47 million Americans remain uninsured, and of those Americans who are insured, many suffer from poor health. In his ground-breaking proposal, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel offers up a plan to comprehensively restructure the delivery and quality of our healthcare. By eliminating employer-healthcare and establishing an independent program to evaluate healthcare plans and insurance companies, he offers a no-nonsense guide to how government can institute private insurance options that will allow each of us a choice of doctor and plan.

With the rate of healthcare costs rapidly outpacing our gross domestic product, we can no longer afford to maintain our fragmented delivery of care, or entertain reforms that seek to patch, rather than cure, a fractured system. Accessible, straightforward, and revolutionary in its approach, Healthcare, Guaranteed is an inarguable guide to lasting healthcare reform.

If Disney Ran Your Hospital: 9 1/2 Things You Would Do Differently

Fred Lee

List Price: $22.00 By: Second River Healthcare Amazon Marketplace: 16 new & used starting at $19.45

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Medicine -> Administration & Policy -> Health Care Delivery
Subjects -> Medicine -> Administration & Policy -> Hospital Administration
Subjects -> Medicine -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The Best Book on the Disney Approach...Period 5 out of 5 stars.
10 of 10 people found this review helpful.

"But I'm not in the hospital business." Neither am I. But I am a Disney Institute alumnus and an avid practitioner of the Disney Approach to People Management, Quality Service, and Loyalty; and I've found "If Disney Ran Your Hospital" more helpful than anything else in print. I think you will, too. Here's why. A number of books explain the principles and practices that drive Disney. Most are helpful, and one, "Be Our Guest" by the Disney Institute, is indispensable. But Fred Lee does one thing better than anyone else: he models how to transfer those principles to another industry. That's what he did at the Disney Institute and that's what he will help you do in your business. Granted, his applications come from healthcare. But along the way Fred Lee demonstrates how to translate and apply the Disney Approach outside of the Disney setting, and that's what's so helpful--he provides an example that the rest of us can follow. If you're interested in benchmarking the Disney Approach, you need this book. One more thing: Fred Lee can write. "If Disney Ran Your Hospital" is the best book on the Disney Approach...period.

Management Lessons from Mayo Clinic: Inside One of the Worlds Most Admired Service Organizations

Leonard Berry, Kent Seltman

Amazon Price: $18.45 List Price: $27.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: McGraw-Hill Amazon Marketplace: 49 new & used starting at $13.95

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Industries & Professions -> Customer Service
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Management
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Operations Research

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Management Lessons from Mayo Clinic reveals for the first time how this complex service organization fosters a culture that exceeds customer expectations and earns deep loyalty from both customers and employees. Service business authority Leonard Berry and Mayo Clinic marketing administrator Kent Seltman explain how the Clinic implements and maintains its strategy, adheres to its management system, executes its care model, and embraces new knowledge - invaluable lessons for managers and service providers of all industries.

. .

Drs. Berry and Seltman had the rare opportunity to study Mayo Clinic's service culture and systems from the inside by conducting personal interviews with leaders, clinicians, staff, and patients, as well as observing hundreds of clinician-patient interactions. The result is a book about how the Clinic's business concept produces stellar clinical results, organizational efficiency, and interpersonal service.

. .

By examining the operating principles that guide every management decision at this legendary healthcare institution, the authors

.

.
• Demonstrate how a great service brand evolves from the core values that nourish and protect it.
• Extrapolate instructive business lessons that apply outside healthcare.
• Illustrate the benefits of pooling talent and encouraging teamwork.
• Relate historical events and perspectives to the present-day Mayo Clinic.
• Share inspiring stories from staff and patients.

.

An innovative analysis of this exemplary institution, Management Lessons from Mayo Clinic presents a proven prescription for creating sustainable service excellence in any organization.

.

Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer

Shannon Brownlee

Amazon Price: $10.88 List Price: $16.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Bloomsbury USA Amazon Marketplace: 43 new & used starting at $7.99

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> General
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> General AAS
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Personal Health -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 24 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

“My choice for the economics book of the year…it’s the best description I have yet read of a huge economic problem that we know how to solve—but is so often misunderstood.”—David Leonhardt, New York Times

Our health care is staggeringly expensive, yet one in six Americans has no health insurance. We have some of the most skilled physicians in the world, yet one hundred thousand patients die each year from medical errors. In this gripping, eye-opening book, award-winning journalist Shannon Brownlee takes readers inside the hospital to dismantle some of our most venerated myths about American medicine. Brownlee dissects what she calls “the medical-industrial complex” and lays bare the backward economic incentives embedded in our system, revealing a stunning portrait of the care we now receive.

Nevertheless, Overtreated ultimately conveys a message of hope by reframing the debate over health care reform. It offers a way to control costs and cover the uninsured while simultaneously improving the quality of American medicine. Shannon Brownlee’s humane, intelligent, and penetrating analysis empowers readers to avoid the perils of overtreatment, as well as pointing the way to better health care for everyone.

With a new afterword offering practical advice to patients on how to navigate the health care system.

Somatics: Reawakening The Mind's Control Of Movement, Flexibility, And Health

Thomas Hanna

List Price: $18.50 By: Da Capo Press Amazon Marketplace: 43 new & used starting at $0.92

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Alternative Medicine -> General
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Alternative Medicine -> General AAS
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Exercise & Fitness -> Injuries & Rehabilitation

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 28 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Review of the other reviews 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I had severe chronic abdominal pain for the best part of a year. I had to quit my sport (rowing) and it really affected my studies. Truth is I was already beginning to realise that my problem was somatic and had begun to release the abdominal tension just by thinking about it. I discovered somatics after that. Personally I have found it an effective approach to releasing tension. It has worked for me but what I would like to know is whether it has worked for others?

The thing about this sort of book is that it is likely to attract positive reviews. We only see the successes and the failures are forgotten about thus distorting the reviews. Indeed this is a failure of the book itself. As a practitioner of somatics Hanna must have had people he could not help. What was their situation? How long did he work with them? As such the first part of the book which discusses case studies and its philosophical basis cannot be regarded as scientific. We can learn as much from failure as from success.

The only critical review at the time of writing is right to criticise the poor visibility of the skeleton diagrams. Others have criticised its lack of mention of the fact that there are people trained in somatic education. If you decide to take on the program then I advise you to go to someone trained in the movements otherwise you risk doing it wrong and wasting your time or at worst making your problem worse.

Somatics is not an alternative to Pilates or Yoga rather it takes certain aspects of those disciplines and refines them as well as adding some additional ideas not found in either. Pilates is about core stability, yoga is about... well yoga and somatics is about muscle tension. The book also fails to adequately put itself within context of other related disciplines.

Anyway, Somatics is a great discipline. I hope that the next edition works out these criticisms.

Editorial Review:

Building on the foundation laid by Moshe Feldenkrais, Thomas Hanna’s groundbreaking work completely redefines the body’s potential for withstanding decline. His gentle program for the mind and body proves once and for all that so many problems we accept as inevitable over time—chronic stiffness, bad back, chronic pain, fatigue, and, at times, even high blood pressure—need never occur if we maintain conscious control of nerve and muscle, replacing Sensory-Motor Amnesia with Sensory-Motor Awareness. The good news of Somatic Exercise is that most people simply do not have to become captives of age or injury. Once learned, this lifelong program can help almost anyone maintain the pleasures of a supple, healthy body indefinitely, with only a five-minute routine once a day.

Who Killed Health Care?: America's $2 Trillion Medical Problem - and the Consumer-Driven Cure

Regina Herzlinger

Amazon Price: $16.47 List Price: $24.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: McGraw-Hill Amazon Marketplace: 54 new & used starting at $13.97

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> General AAS
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Personal Health -> General
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Personal Health -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 28 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In the battle for U.S. health care, patients and doctors are losing. .

Who Killed Health Care? shows how to win the war. . .

One of the nation's most respected health care analysts, Regina Herzlinger exposes the motives and methods of those who have crippled America's health care system-figures in the insurance, hospital, employment, governmental, and academic sectors. She proves how our current system, which is organized around payers and providers rather than the needs of its users, is dangerously eroding patient welfare and is pushing costs out of the reach of millions.

.

Who Killed Health Care? then outlines Herzlinger's bold new plan for a consumer-driven system that will deliver affordable, high-quality care to everyone. By putting insurance money in the hands of patients, removing the middleman in the doctor-patient relationship, and giving employers cost relief, consumers and physicians will be empowered to make the system work the way it should. Herzlinger describes in precise detail how her innovative program will provide

. .

.
• Smaller, disease-focused medical facilities that provide complete care for patients.
• A national system of medical records that provides privacy with confidential access by approved practitioners.
• Mandatory performance evaluations of all hospitals and all other medical organizations.
• Mandatory health insurance with subsidies for those who cannot afford it.

. .

Who Killed Health Care? is a call to arms that must be answered; the welfare of every American hangs in the balance.

. .

�A brilliant analysis� A must-read.� � Bill George, Professor, Harvard Business School and Former CEO of Medtronic

. .

�As it becomes more and more obvious to everyone that our current health care system is unsustainable, this is the book that had to be written.� � Daniel H. Johnson, Jr. MD, former president of the American Medical Association

. .

�Regina Herzlinger�s ideas to tackle the crisis of the U.S. health care system are based on keen knowledge of the system�s existing difficulties along with insights that introduce the reader to new streamlined choices that have the potential of getting both quantity and cost under control.� � Joseph Kennedy, founder, chairman, and president, Citizens Energy Corporation, CEO, Citizens Health Care, former representative (D-Mass)

. . �Regina Herzlinger� offers a vision of the way things can be, should be, and will be sooner or later. The only question is: how long do we have to wait?� � Greg Scandlen, founder, Consumers for Health Choices

. . �Regi Herzlinger has brilliantly articulated a better way � embracing the principles of competition and innovation that cause every other sector of our economy to thrive. Discharging American health care from the ICU can only happen by putting individual Americans � not politicians and bureaucrats � back in charge of their health care decisioins.� � U.S. Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla), M.D.

. . �Following on the heels of her landmark Market-Driven Health Care, Herzlinger lays it on the line with her expose of what many who work in the health care industry have felt in their gut. Now it is articulated in an entertaining and must-read portrayal, with you and me as the only way out.� � Dennis White, executive vice president for strategic development, National Business Coalition on Health

. . �A wonderful Orwellian romp through issues which carry a deadly irony. The killers of health care are, of course, the third parties, each of which has an itchy palm and a commitment to profit or power which exceeds the commitment to service, with each engaging the others within a politically shaped box. Rarely has the case for the public been made with so much force, foresight, and wit, and a better way forward shown so clearly.� � James F. Fries, MD, Professor of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine

. . �You can practically hear the war chants as Professor Herzlinger sets out her view of what�s wrong with the health care system and how to fix it. You�d best read it so you can decide which side you will be on when the battle is joined.� � Paul Levy, CEO, Beth Israel Hospital, Boston, MA

. . . . . . �Regina Herzlinger, the nation�s leading expert on consumer-driven health care, has given us a brilliant analysis of the flaws in our health care system and what it will take to get it back on track. Her latest book is a must-read.� � Bill George, Professor of Management Practice, Harvard Business School, Former CEO, Medtronic, and author of Authentic Leadership

. . �You don�t have to agree with her diagnosis and prescription for the U.S. health care system, but you do have to read her book. Once again, Professor Herzlinger has put together a well researched, well written, and very provocative blueprint for the future of health care.� Peter L. Slavin, MD, President, Massachusetts General Hospital

. (20070705)