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Fragmented : a doctor's quest to piece together American health care / Ilana Yurkiewicz, MD.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York, N.Y. : W.W. Norton & Company, [2023]Copyright date: ©2023Edition: First editionDescription: xvii, 252 pages ; 24 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9780393881196
  • 0393881199
Subject(s):
Contents:
Introduction -- Part 1: The data dig. Paper trails -- Who owns the story? -- Making computers work for us -- Part 2: Lost to follow-up. Are you my doctor? -- Twenty-eight hours in Hell -- Reinventing primary care -- Part 3: The stories we tell ourselves. These things happen -- The likeliest unlikely -- Fixing fragmentation together -- The full story: a patient's checklist.
Summary: "An award-winning physician-writer reveals how pervasive cracks in the health care system cost us time, energy, and lives-and how we can fix them. There's an unspoken assumption when you go to see a doctor: the doctor knows your medical story and is making decisions based on that story. But the reality frequently falls short. Medical records vanish when we switch doctors. Critical details of life-saving treatment plans get lost in muddled electronic charts. The doctors we see change according to specialty, hospital shifts, or an insurer's whims. Stanford physician Ilana Yurkiewicz calls this fragmentation, and, she reveals, it's the central failure of health care today. In this gripping narrative from medicine's front lines, she shows how a system that doesn't talk to itself forces doctors, patients, and their loved ones to go to heroic lengths to bridge the gaps. With lives at stake and little other choice, we all do so--but the system is hanging by a thread, and we need better solutions. Radiantly humane, empowering, and ultimately hopeful, Fragmented is a prescription for what really needs fixing in modern medicine"-- Provided by publisher.
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library NonFiction 362.1042 Y95 Available 33111011301237
Adult Book Adult Book Northport Library NonFiction 362.1042 Y95 Available 33111009478971
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

There's an unspoken assumption when we go to see a doctor: the doctor knows our medical story and is making decisions based on that story. But reality frequently falls short. Medical records vanish when we switch doctors. Critical details of life-saving treatment plans get lost in muddled electronic charts. The doctors we see change according to specialty, hospital shifts, or an insurer's whims. Physician Ilana Yurkiewicz calls this phenomenon fragmentation, and, she argues, it's the central failure of health care today.

In this gripping narrative from medicine's front lines, Yurkiewicz reveals how a system that doesn't talk to itself puts insupportable burdens on physicians, patients, and caregivers, forcing them to heroic lengths to hold the pieces together--barely. The stories she tells are at once harrowing and commonplace. A patient narrowly averts an unnecessary, invasive heart procedure by producing a worn rhythm strip he has carried in his pocket for a decade. A man diagnosed with leukemia while visiting from abroad has thirty-one physicians, but no one he can call "his" doctor, with tragic consequences. When Yurkiewicz's own father falls ill, a culture that incentivizes health care providers to react with quick fixes to the problems immediately before them--often to the neglect of a patient's overall narrative--leads to weeks of additional suffering and a risky hospital transfer.

The system is hanging by a thread, and we need better solutions. Yurkiewicz issues a clear-eyed call for change, naming concrete reforms doctors and policymakers can make, and empowering patients and their loved ones to advocate for themselves in the meantime. Urgent, radiantly humane, and ultimately hopeful, Fragmented a prescription for what really needs fixing in modern medicine.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 239-247) and index.

"An award-winning physician-writer reveals how pervasive cracks in the health care system cost us time, energy, and lives-and how we can fix them. There's an unspoken assumption when you go to see a doctor: the doctor knows your medical story and is making decisions based on that story. But the reality frequently falls short. Medical records vanish when we switch doctors. Critical details of life-saving treatment plans get lost in muddled electronic charts. The doctors we see change according to specialty, hospital shifts, or an insurer's whims. Stanford physician Ilana Yurkiewicz calls this fragmentation, and, she reveals, it's the central failure of health care today. In this gripping narrative from medicine's front lines, she shows how a system that doesn't talk to itself forces doctors, patients, and their loved ones to go to heroic lengths to bridge the gaps. With lives at stake and little other choice, we all do so--but the system is hanging by a thread, and we need better solutions. Radiantly humane, empowering, and ultimately hopeful, Fragmented is a prescription for what really needs fixing in modern medicine"-- Provided by publisher.

Introduction -- Part 1: The data dig. Paper trails -- Who owns the story? -- Making computers work for us -- Part 2: Lost to follow-up. Are you my doctor? -- Twenty-eight hours in Hell -- Reinventing primary care -- Part 3: The stories we tell ourselves. These things happen -- The likeliest unlikely -- Fixing fragmentation together -- The full story: a patient's checklist.

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