American Healthcare Unchained: The History, Myths & Economics of Health Care Policy & Reform (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781480070028)

I was born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1953. My dad was a chemical engineer and a Southern Baptist minister. In the late 1950s, he was ousted from his pulpit for inviting the black folks in our community to attend our church. He taught me to do the right thing first, and worry about the consequences later. My mom was a social worker at the Memphis public hospital and Le Bonheur Children's Hospital. I grew up in the rural Arkansas delta and Memphis, Tennessee, with two brothers and one sister. I graduated from Rhodes College in Memphis with a degree in Chemistry, and got my M.D. at the University of Tennessee College of the Health Sciences in 1980. I am board certified in emergency medicine. During my first year of medical school, while lost in the medical library late one night, I had an epiphany that has shaped my career. I realized I was swimming in a sea of information that would make me an incredibly good doctor - if I could learn it all. Sadly, I realized I could never learn it all. It's just too much for any human to master. At the same time, I was encouraged by the insight that healthcare is not limited by our knowledge, but only by the limited capacity of our brains to store and apply that knowledge. I was intrigued by the notion that computing technology - still primitive in 1977 - might allow us to transcend those barriers in my lifetime. In subsequent years, I practiced emergency medicine and founded Challenger Corporation, with the goal of using information technology to improve physician education. Later, I opened a small-town primary care clinic, where I practiced for 9 years, developed software to improve clinic efficiency, and struggled to survive in a world of disappearing small practices. That experience demonstrated vividly how inefficient our healthcare system has become, and challenged me to seek solutions. When not working on healthcare technology or policy, I enjoy hiking, yoga, songwriting and reading. My wife, Alicia, and I live in northwest Arkansas. We are currently developing medical software tools to improve healthcare access and delivery. I can be reached at dan.unchained@gmail.com. Yours for Better Healthcare, Dan Jones, MD