Unaccountable What Hospitals Won't Tell You and How Transparency Can Revolutionize Health Care

by Makary, Marty, M.D.

• ISBN13: 9781608198368
• ISBN10: 1608198367
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-09-18
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Press

Summary

Dr. Marty Makary helped develop the life-saving checklist outlined in Atul Gawande's bestselling The Checklist Manifesto. As a busy surgeon who has worked in many of the best medical centers in the nation, he can testify to the amazing power of modern medicine to cure the ill. But he's also been a witness to a medical culture that routinely leaves surgical sponges inside patients, amputates the wrong limbs, and overdoses children because of sloppy handwriting. Over the last ten years, error rates have not come down, despite efforts to promote safety. Why?The healthcare system is an intricate maze controlled by doctors and hospitals. Patients need to know more of what healthcare workers know. Healthcare's real problem is its wide range of quality, and its lack of transparency. Transparency in healthcare would expose bad outliers, reward good performance, and force positive change nationally, using the power of the free market. Our broken healthcare system is in desperate need of simple, non-partisan reform. Unaccountable is a powerful, no-nonsense diagnosis for healing our hospitals and reforming our healthcare system.

Author Biography

Marty Makary, M.D., M.P.H. is a surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital and a professor of Health Policy at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. He is a regular medical commentator for CNN and FOX News, and appears weekly on a wide variety of programs to discuss health topics. He is a leading patient-safety researcher and led the World Health Organization effort to develop ways to measure healthcare quality. He tweets @DrMartyMD.

Table of Contents

"A searing insider's look at what really goes on behind the scenes at major hospitals and how implementing simple steps toward transparency can empower patients and dramatically improve the culture and safety of health care…. A galvanizing book full of shocking truths about the current state of health care."—Kirkus Reviews

"This thought-provoking guide from a leader in the field is a must-read for M.D.s, and an eye-opener for the rest of us."—Publishers Weekly