Prescription for the Future ─ The Twelve Transformational Practices of Highly Effective Medical Organizations

Author, physician, and bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel is one of our country's leading thinkers on healthcare reform. In Getting Better, he looks to the future to describe how the best healthcare in the US will be achieved in coming years. Emanuel highlights the surgeons who have embraced and already implemented the best practices of the future today, and the physicians or managers in at least six different physician groups from across the country who have developed innovative care models and driven successful change.

In particular, he highlights the significant common attributes shared by the best medical practitioners: focusing services on the high-cost chronically ill, streamlining processes of care, providing more intense outpatient services with standardized care practices, and using rigorous data collection to provide identifiable, comparative performance data. The book also examines the three ?megatrends? that will dominate the near future of healthcare: The first will be total care?moving all but the most complex care out of the hospital and office back to patients' homes. The second will be the reinvention of the primary care team ?the increased need for primary care physicians, behavioral health care providers, and nurses, as well as the creation of a new community-based role, the health advisor. The third trend will be the end of many medical specialties.

This book will be an essential guide to the future of healthcare?not only for professionals employed in America's largest sector?but also for anyone who wants to distinguish competent and progressive medical teams from outmoded and ossified surgeons?so that you can be sure to get the best healthcare of the future if you need it today.