Argues for a health care system that would restore power and responsibility to the individual consumer and taking it out of the hands of government and insurance companies

The essential guide by one of America's leading doctors to how digital technology enables all of us to take charge of our health A trip to the doctor is almost a guarantee of misery. You'll make an appointment months in advance. You'll probably wait for several hours until you hear "the doctor will see you now"-but only for fifteen minutes! Then you'll wait even longer for lab tests, the results of which you'll likely never see, unless they indicate further (and more invasive) tests, most of which will probably prove unnecessary (much like physicals themselves). And your bill will be astronomical. In The Patient Will See You Now, Eric Topol, one of the nation's top physicians, shows why medicine does not have to be that way. Instead, you could use your smartphone to get rapid test results from one drop of blood, monitor your vital signs both day and night, and use an artificially intelligent algorithm to receive a diagnosis without having to see a doctor, all at a small fraction of the cost imposed by our modern healthcare system. The change is powered by what Topol calls medicine's "Gutenberg moment." Much as the printing press took learning out of the hands of a priestly class, the mobile internet is doing the same for medicine, giving us unprecedented control over our healthcare. With smartphones in hand, we are no longer beholden to an impersonal and paternalistic system in which "doctor knows best." Medicine has been digitized, Topol argues; now it will be democratized. Computers will replace physicians for many diagnostic tasks, citizen science will give rise to citizen medicine, and enormous data sets will give us new means to attack conditions that have long been incurable. Massive, open, online medicine, where diagnostics are done by Facebook-like comparisons of medical profiles, will enable real-time, real-world research on massive populations. There's no doubt the path forward will be complicated: the medical establishment will resist these changes, and digitized medicine inevitably raises serious issues surrounding privacy. Nevertheless, the result-better, cheaper, and more human health care-will be worth it. Provocative and engrossing, The Patient Will See You Now is essential reading for anyone who thinks they deserve better health care. That is, for all of us.

This User’s Guide is intended to support the design, implementation, analysis, interpretation, and quality evaluation of registries created to increase understanding of patient outcomes. For the purposes of this guide, a patient registry is an organized system that uses observational study methods to collect uniform data (clinical and other) to evaluate specified outcomes for a population defined by a particular disease, condition, or exposure, and that serves one or more predetermined scientific, clinical, or policy purposes. A registry database is a file (or files) derived from the registry. Although registries can serve many purposes, this guide focuses on registries created for one or more of the following purposes: to describe the natural history of disease, to determine clinical effectiveness or cost-effectiveness of health care products and services, to measure or monitor safety and harm, and/or to measure quality of care. Registries are classified according to how their populations are defined. For example, product registries include patients who have been exposed to biopharmaceutical products or medical devices. Health services registries consist of patients who have had a common procedure, clinical encounter, or hospitalization. Disease or condition registries are defined by patients having the same diagnosis, such as cystic fibrosis or heart failure. The User’s Guide was created by researchers affiliated with AHRQ’s Effective Health Care Program, particularly those who participated in AHRQ’s DEcIDE (Developing Evidence to Inform Decisions About Effectiveness) program. Chapters were subject to multiple internal and external independent reviews.

Are they truly independent organizations or have they been 'colonized' by the big vested interests in health? Are they a signal of a more assertive patient or consumer? Do they actually influence what health care people receive?" "This study will be important reading for scholars, students and professionals and, in particular, for those involved in running patient organizations."--Jacket.

These reflections from the career of a prominent physician help students and the public better understand patient care through insights gained from his stories. Medical knowledge and technology are advancing faster than we can learn to apply them wisely. The pace of change threatens the humanistic aspects of patient care. The arts of listening, observing and examining, and the values of professionalism, ethics, and humor are threatened; both patient and physician are dissatisfied. It is time to restore balance in the care of patients by reinforcing the importance of these skills-and this groundbreaking book does just that. By sharing remarkable patient stories accumulated over almost six decades, Dr. Paul Griner shows how the somewhat elusive concepts intrinsic to "the art" of medicine can be better understood and applied in the day to day care of patients. Provocative questions at the end of each story challenge the reader to avoid a premature response, reflect more deeply on the question and learn how much of medicine is not black and white. Included are such compelling questions as: How do you respond to a parent who insists that her twenty-two year old daughter not be told she has leukemia?, What do you say to the mother of a nineteen year -old son who begs to let him die so that he can be relieved of the agonizing complications of his aplastic anemia?, How do you advise the pregnant wife of a medical resident who wishes to defer treatment for Hodgkin's Disease, for months, until after the baby is born?, How do you account for a patient whose leukemia disappears without treatment?, How do you respond to the death of a patient from an intern's careless act? These and almost fifty other stories provide a rich learning experience for both patients and health care professionals alike. A clarion call to balance humanism and technology for the benefits of a system that is breaking apart, Dr. Griner's collection of stories is a revelation. Exploring the variety of patient problems to delineate points of learning and personal growth, The Power of Patient Stories, Learning Moments in Medicine is a must read for patients and health professions students.

For the increasingly confused patient, this empowering, informative, and easy-to-understand guide to anticipating, preventing, and overcoming common errors in medical tests, diagnoses, and procedures "confronts the tough, practical issues which most popular medical guides omit or gloss over" (Dr. Gerald Lazar, Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School).

Are patients passive, or merely deferent? How does gender affect questioning and topic control in medical encounters? What does it sound like when physician and patient co-construct a diagnosis through storytelling? Nancy Ainsworth-Vaughn, a sociolinguist, ethnographer, and cancer survivor, answers questions such as these in a study of 100 medical encounters, with balanced numbers of men and women among physicians as well as patients. Ainsworth-Vaughn draws upon linguistics and medical ethics to develop a comprehensive theory of types of power. She engages critical problems in discourse theory, expanding our understanding of topic transitions, questions, ambiguity, and co-construction.