Tag: Healthcare

Posted on by — 3 Comments

An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back

At a moment of drastic political upheaval, a shocking investigation into the dangerous, expensive, and dysfunctional American healthcare system, as well as solutions to its myriad of problems

In these troubled times, perhaps no institution has unraveled more quickly and more completely than American medicine. In only a few decades, the medical system has been overrun by organizations seeking to exploit for profit the trust that vulnerable and sick Americans place in their healthcare. Our politicians have proven themselves either unwilling or incapable of reining in the increasingly outrageous costs faced by patients, and market-based solutions only seem to funnel larger and larger sums of our money into the hands of corporations. Impossibly high insurance premiums and inexplicably large bills have become facts of life; fatalism has set in. Very quickly Americans have been made to accept paying more for less. How did things get so bad so fast?

Breaking down this monolithic business into the individual industries—the hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, and drug manufacturers—that together constitute our healthcare system, Rosenthal exposes the recent evolution of American medicine as never before. How did healthcare, the caring endeavor, become healthcare, the highly profitable industry? Hospital systems, which are managed by business executives, behave like predatory lenders, hounding patients and seizing their homes. Research charities are in bed with big pharmaceutical companies, which surreptitiously profit from the donations made by working people. Patients receive bills in code, from entrepreneurial doctors they never even saw. 

The system is in tatters, but we can fight back. Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal doesn’t just explain the symptoms, she diagnoses and treats the disease itself. In clear and practical terms, she spells out exactly how to decode medical doublespeak, avoid the pitfalls of the pharmaceuticals racket, and get the care you and your family deserve. She takes you inside the doctor-patient relationship and to hospital C-suites, explaining step-by-step the workings of a system badly lacking transparency. This is about what we can do, as individual patients, both to navigate the maze that is American healthcare and also to demand far-reaching reform. An American Sickness is the frontline defense against a healthcare system that no longer has our well-being at heart.

Posted on by — 2 Comments

McGraw-Hill’s Spanish for Healthcare Providers, Second Edition (McGraw-Hill’s Spanish for Healthcare Providers (W/CDs))

All the tools you need to communicate confidently and effectively with Spanish-speaking patients

As a dedicated healthcare provider you know that effective communication is key to providing patients with the high quality of care they deserve. And for healthcare providers working in North America that often entails communicating with Spanish-speaking patients and their families.

A valuable resource for physicians, nurses, hospital technicians, physical therapists, and medical administrators with little or no Spanish-language experience, this book provides you with all the Spanish you need to do your job.

Convenient, flexible, and complete, McGraw-Hill’s Spanish for Healthcare Providers features:

A Comprehensive Course Book–Using sample dialogues, numerous exercises, and more than 200 expert illustrations, the book introduces a vocabulary of 3,000 general and medical terms, builds familiarity with typical medical situations, and develops a greater awareness of Latino culture and its impact on healthcare issues. A bilingual glossary features 1,000 of the most useful medical Spanish terms for easy reference. Audio CDs–Featuring a variety of native speakers, the first two CDs contain vocabulary, phrases, and dialogues that reflect a wide range of common medical situations–everything from the first interview to medication instructions and follow-up–while the third zeros in on situations typically encountered by physicians, nurses, physician assistants, technicians, and other healthcare providers. An accompanying booklet contains the full scripts and English translations of the dialogues. Continuing Medical Education Tests for CME credit–The 15 CME tests contained in this booklet have been approved by the AMA for up to 75 hours of credit. Test accreditation is sponsored by the University of Arizona College of Medicine at the Arizona Health Sciences Center.