David A. Shore – Författare

The lack of trust in our healthcare system brings ominous results, from decreasing health outcomes to increasing costs, from organisation inefficiencies to a pervasive pattern of litigation. This will only worsen as healthcare becomes subject to greater market mechanisms, and as patients, providers, and payers view each other with increasing suspicion. Healthcare professionals are just now coming to realise what other professionals have known for years: trust is earned, not assumed. The Trust Crisis represents the first comprehensive survey of the causes and consequences of declining trust in healthcare, and more importantly, it provides suggestions for restoring the trust.Shore brings together an unparalleled collection of healthcare leaders for this volume. Chapter authors include Donald Berwick, Robert Blendon, Lucian Leape, and George Lundberg. The book also features an introduction by Cokie and Steve Roberts. Causes, consequences, and cures for the crisis in trust are specifically addressed. Critical areas treated by the authors include:BL systemic conditions that lead to medical errors, and remedies for promoting quality of careBL outdated modes of doctor-patient communication that hinder complianceBL novel modes of interaction to improve satisfactionBL patient-centered care and metrics to evaluate its presence or absenceBL media communication and miscommunication, and new standards for medical reportingBL clinical insights applied to the use of human subjects in biomedical researchBL recommendations for revising medical school curricula and strengthening the peer-review process in medical journalsBL practical strategies for decreasing the lingering discord between patients, providers, and health plansWhile presenting a diversity of topics and opinions, the authors of this volume agree upon a few principles. The trust famine will have dire consequences if it continues unchecked. Healthcare leaders can take measures to improve trust. Regaining trust requires that entire organisations pay closer attention to the "human factors" of healthcare. And perhaps most critical for change, trust-building is not only good medicine, but good business as well.

The United States health care system is broken. Critics and commentators point to the staggering costs of health care, the shrinking insurance coverage, and the diminishing access that many U.S. citizens have to essential services and treatments. These problems are compounded by a growing realization that the quality of care across the country is uneven at best, with the goal of finding the appropriate kind and level of care proving elusive. High Stakes enters into the health care debates at a critical time, offering an analysis that homes in on factors that account for many of the inefficiencies and shortcomings of our unsystematic system, and putting forth recommendations that are ideologically blind.Using real-world examples to illustrate the fragile state of health care today, Drs. Shore and Kupferberg enlist a powerful analytic frame to bear on these conflicts: stakeholder management. That involves addressing the present system of conflicts, in which key groups in the field pursue their own interests at the risk of the system at large. Insurance providers want to reduce their payments, hospitals want higher reimbursements, patients want access to unlimited services, and no one wants to work together. The fights are constant and financially disastrous, for every dollar earned by one group is one less dollar earned by another. For health care to succeed as an enterprise, key stakeholder groups must come to appreciate their dependence on other groups. More importantly, they must find ways to align their interests and move beyond entrenched behaviors. As the authors point out, all constituency groups must begin by acknowledging that where people stand on an issue depends on where they sit, and that greater stakeholder alignment and engagement are prerequisites for more effective and efficient health care. Drawing equally from both scholarly studies and real world examples, High Stakes offers health care leaders the necessary tools to both map their current stakeholder relationships and fashion concrete steps to produce greater stakeholder engagement, collaboration, and cooperative competition.

Particularly valuable to social workers and health care personnel, this timely volume offers practical guidelines and unique treatment approaches to use with clients who have sex-related problems. Experts address sexual health and social work intervention in sexual problems. They also present important information on significant health problems--cancer, chronic illness; patient characteristics; and special issues, which illustrate the various social work intervention responses available to meet patients’sexual problems.

Here is an indispensable book highlighting information on the problem of child sexual abuse for anyone concerned with the welfare of young children. Focusing on the social worker’s role in responding to the abuse of children, this highly practical volume assesses the state of knowledge about sexual abuse. It includes reviews of the historical context in which sexual abuse takes place and sheds light on issues surrounding the professional’s responses to sexual abuse, alternative models of sexual abuse treatment programs, and practice knowledge developments. The contributors have also addressed a number of clinical issues including family treatment and social work treatment at a juvenile court, as well as the role of the courts and the problem of sexual abuse and sexual education in child-caring institutions.

American health care has made great strides in the past hundred years. Life expectancy has increased dramatically and advances in medicine and treatments have eradicated many life-threatening diseases. However, in today's health care arena there is divergence between our health needs, the structure of our health care system, and how health care is delivered and funded.In Forces of Change, David A. Shore has collected the leading thinking from experts in the field on how our health care system can benefit from important lessons from other industries and effect transformational change that truly serves all stakeholders well.Contributors include Max Caldwell of Towers Watson; Michael J. Dowling of North Shore–Long Island Jewish Medical Health System; John P. Glaser of Siemens Healthcare; Ashish K. Jha of the Harvard School of Public Health; Eric D. Kupferberg of Northeastern University; Lucian Leape of the Harvard School of Public Health; Jeff Margolis of the TriZetto Group, Inc.; and David Shoultz of Philips Electronics.