Comprehensive Healthcare for the U.S.: An Idealized Model (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781439829554)

Three years in its creation, Comprehensive Healthcare for the U.S.: An Idealized Model brings together contributions from physicians, nurses, administrators, and social workers from around the globe to critically examine the mire of excellent technical quality and inefficient delivery that has become the United States healthcare system.

Written by award-winning author William Roth, the book systematically explores the key elements that must be part of any comprehensive model. Roth examines facility network and staffing patterns. He looks at approaches to decision making, the financial model, the design of a universal information system, training/education, and malpractice policy. He then provides a discussion of how these challenges are dealt with by 12 other nations, all of which, according to the World Health Organization, rank higher than the U.S.in terms of services provided for citizens.

Roth tackles the larger philosophical issues and their connection to the specifics without obscuring the discussion with excessive statistics. He systematically shreds the inflammatory political rhetoric that is often used to shut down intelligent debate. He explores what it might take to make comprehensive care available to all, ways to shift our focus to wellness and prevention, the overuse of and lack of incentive for providers in universal systems, though some form of universal care is necessary, as well as the key role that the private sector must play in any approach.

From there, the author draws from the best to design an idealized model for comprehensive healthcare that would fit the unique requirements of the United States. Referenced and researched to satisfy the needs of policy professionals and sector administrators, the book is lucidly written so that it provides all stakeholders with a more complete grasp of the involved problems as well as of the proven solutions that can be put into place once we understand their value and their viability.

A highly readable book on healthcare
that's well worth the reading:
informative, insightful, and innovative

• Disscuses whether healthcare is a right or a privilege
• Provides essential information in an easy-to-read format that educates without burying readers in statistical data
• Draws from the best healthcare innovations in other nations
• Offers a comprehensive model for U.S. healthcare rather than just one or several pieces of such a model
• Addresses major problems including cost, variances in access and quality of care, malpractice, competition, inadequate health records and access to information, lack of a preventative focus