Book Stop

Check out our recommended reading list.  We continue to search for new reviewed works.  If you have a book to recommend, please contact us.

Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance
Synopsis
The bestselling author of ‘Complications’ fascinating examination of how medical professionals strive for better, even in the face of adversity.

Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance

Washington Post Review
Better makes a compelling case for medical self-awareness in the operating room, on the hospital ward and even on the battlefield. Gawande succeeds in looking at medical achievement — and lapses — from a new perspective. His stories evoke the profound desire that doctors feel to cure, along with our besetting anxieties about poor performance and its consequences. He makes his case that failure is “so easy, so effortless,” but also that “positive deviance” — deliberate and determined individual improvement — is possible. His own self-consciousness, his ability to ask questions about the nuts and bolts of medical practice, and his storytelling skills make this a book about the complex grandeur of the human endeavor that is medicine.

Keys to EMR Success: Selecting and Implementing an Electronic Medical Record
Synopsis
This outstanding book was chosen Book of the Year Award Winner for HIMSS (Healthcare Information Management and Systems Society) because it comprehensively covers the selection and implementation of electronic medical records for the physician practice.

Keys to EMR Success

Manuscript Reviews
National initiatives to accelerate the adoption of health IT is directly linked to successful implementation of EHR-EMR systems. This book will guide you to a successful implementation. Vinson J.Hudson President/POMIS Industry Analyst, Austin, Texas

This book is an invaluable resource for practices facing the arduous task of choosing and implementing an EMR system. By following Sterling’s methodical and detailed approach, the reader is transformed into a more intelligent buyer. The checklists are terrific! Karen Zupko President, Karen Zupko & Associates, Chicago, Illinois

 
The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care
Synopsis
In The Healing of America, New York Times bestselling author T. R. Reid shows how all the other industrialized democracies have achieved something the United States can’t seem to do: provide health care for everybody at a reasonable cost. In his global quest to find a possible prescription, Reid visits wealthy, free market, industrialized democracies like our own including France, Germany, Japan, the U.K., and Canada where he finds inspiration in example. 

The Healing of America

Washington Post Review

Reid acknowledges that the health systems in the countries he studied have their own problems. He also admits that none has figured out how to contain the global long-term trend toward higher costs as populations age, the spread of Western lifestyle and diet causes an epidemic of chronic illness, and as expensive new medical technologies become available. But he does demonstrate that [critics] put forward a distorted image when they contend that other industrialized countries ration health care and constrain patients’ choice of doctors, deny effective care and, in essence, provide socialized medicine. Reid shows us how other advanced countries easily combine universal coverage and government regulation with entrepreneurialism and respect for market forces to produce high quality, low cost health care—a simple empirical truth we can no longer afford to ignore.

Management Lessons from Mayo Clinic: Inside One of the Worlds Most Admired Service Organizations
Synopsis
Management Lessons from Mayo Clinic reveals for the first time how this complex service organization fosters a culture that exceeds customer expectations and earns deep loyalty from both customers and employees. Service business authority Leonard Berry and Mayo Clinic marketing administrator Kent Seltman explain how the Clinic implements and maintains its strategy, adheres to its management system, executes its care model, and embraces new knowledge – invaluable lessons for managers and service providers of all industries.

Management Lessons from Mayo Clinic

Reviews
“Quite possibly the most important management book to appear in more than a decade…essential reading for the leaders of any type of organization.”-Gerald Zaltman, PhD, author of How Customers Think

“This book reads like a thriller taking you into the heart of a great organization and peeling off, layer by layer, the secrets of creating incomparable performance for your customers and your partners. It should be read by everyone in business.”-Philip Kotler, Ph.D., S.C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University

“A landmark. Through deep study, respectful listening, and eloquent reporting, the authors connect ’service success’ to the very core of healthcare’s mission and to the very soul of the healthcare workforce.”-Donald M. Berwick, M.D., MPP, president and CEO, Institute for Healthcare Improvement

Howard Dean’s Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform: How We Can Achieve Affordable Medical Care for Every American and Make Our Jobs Safer
Synopsis
Americans have pondered how to reform healthcare since the days of Harry Truman. But for most Americans, little has changed—except that healthcare costs have soared, health insurance companies have grown bigger and more oppressive to both doctors and patients, and today even those Americans who pay dearly for health insurance frequently find that their policies don’t adequately cover them when they need their coverage most.
Something has got to give. In his bold new book, Howard Dean—the physician and former governor widely credited for reviving the Democratic Party after the 2004 elections—tells Americans what needs to be done to successfully reform healthcare.

Howard Dean's Prescription for Health Care Reform

Publishers Weekly
As a both a Democratic Party standard bearer and a former practicing physician, Gov. Dean (You Have the Power, Winning Back America) has placed himself at the forefront of grass-roots organizing for healthcare reform. In a searing indictment of private insurers who put profits ahead of care, Dean advocates a public-health insurance option, posing the question: “Is private health insurance really health insurance? Or is it simply an extension of the things that have been happening on Wall Street?” Charts illustrate the disadvantages faced by U.S. industry against competitors in other countries, and dovetail with his plan for “healthcare reform, not just insurance reform,” including more preventative medicine, home-care for seniors, standards set by medical professionals rather than insurers; ultimately, he concludes, the result would be lower costs and better medicine. Dean is most controversial when he proposes to fund reforms with a carbon tax on gasoline, and only slightly less so when asserting that a “reform bill is not worth passing” without a public option. This lively, detailed read should help shape the debate on one of the year’s most pressing issues.