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Roughly one in ten adult Americans find their walking slowed by progressive chronic conditions like arthritis, back problems, heart and lung diseases, and diabetes. In this passionate and deeply informed book, Lisa I. Iezzoni describes the personal experiences of and societal responses to adults whose mobility makes it difficult for them to live as they wish—partly because of physical and emotional conditions and partly because of persisting societal and environmental barriers. Basing her conclusions on personal experience, a wealth of survey data, and extensive interviews with dozens of people from a wide social spectrum, Iezzoni explains who has mobility problems and why; how mobility di...
Nearly twenty percent of Americans live today with some sort of disability, and this number will grow in coming decades as the population ages. Despite this, the U.S. health care system is not set up to provide care comfortably, safely, and efficiently to persons with disabilities. Individuals with disabilities can therefore face significant barriers to obtaining high quality health care. Some barriers result from obvious impediments, such as doors without automatic openers and examining tables that are too high. Other barriers arise from faulty communication between patients and health care professionals, including misconceptions among clinicians about the daily lives, preferences, values, ...
Through a compelling combination of policy analysis and humanizing detail of both consumers and providers of PAS, this book appeals to students, scholars, and patients of these services who are considering use of self-directed PAS alike.
This text offers independent chapters for a multidisciplinary readership of students and professionals in areas such as biostatistics, public health, psychology, and health policy. It introduces concepts and methods for designing, using, and evaluating risk adjustment methods when comparing outcomes of care such as costs, clinical outcomes, and patient-centered outcomes in various health care settings. Because the field is broad and changing, the book does not review existing risk adjustment methods; instead, it concentrates on basic methods and principles that apply generally to risk adjustment. Individual chapters are devoted to data from administrative sources, medical records, and patien...
In a world where there is increasing demand for the performance of health providers to be measured, there is a need for a more strategic vision of the role that performance measurement can play in securing health system improvement. This volume meets this need by presenting the opportunities and challenges associated with performance measurement in a framework that is clear and easy to understand. It examines the various levels at which health system performance is undertaken, the technical instruments and tools available, and the implications using these may have for those charged with the governance of the health system. Technical material is presented in an accessible way and is illustrated with examples from all over the world. Performance Measurement for Health System Improvement is an authoritative and practical guide for policy makers, regulators, patient groups and researchers.
Administrators and faculty in medical, nursing and health science programs are witnessing a substantial increase in the number of students with disabilities entering their programs. Concurrently, the benefits of diversity in healthcare are becoming increasingly apparent and important. Provider-patient concordance is a known mechanism for reducing health care disparities. By developing a workforce that mirrors the patient population, we can appropriately inform disability care, reducing health care disparities while embracing the tenets of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), namely equal opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency for qualified in...
In this innovative title, the authors describe unique patient populations affected by stigma and prejudice and the prevalence of these issues to all healthcare providers. Each chapter covers the forms of prejudice and stigma associated with minority statuses, including religious minorities, the homeless, as well as those stigmatized by medical serious medical conditions, such HIV/AIDS, obesity, and substance misuse disorders. The chapters focus on the importance of recognizing biological differences and similarities within such groups and describes the challenges and best practices for optimum healthcare outcomes. The text describes innovative ways to connect in a clinical setting with people of diverse backgrounds. The text also covers future directions and areas of research and innovative clinical work being done. Written by experts in the field, Stigma and Prejudice is an excellent resource for psychiatrist, psychologists, general physicians, social workers, and all other medical professionals working with stigmatized populations.
Americans are living longer—and staying healthier longer—than ever before. Despite the rapid disappearance of pensions and health care benefits for retirees, older people are healthier and better off than they were twenty years ago. In Health at Older Ages, a distinguished team of economists analyzes the foundations of disability decline, quantifies this phenomenon in economic terms, and proposes what might be done to accelerate future improvements in the health of our most elderly populations. This breakthrough volume argues that educational attainment, high socioeconomic status, an older retirement age, and accessible medical care have improved the health and quality of life of seniors. Along the way, it outlines the economic benefits of disability decline, such as an increased rate of seniors in the workplace, relief for the healthcare system and care-giving families, and reduced medical expenses for the elderly themselves. Health at Older Ages will be an essential contribution to the debate about meeting the medical needs of an aging nation.
Health care delivery in the United States is an enormously complex enterprise, and its $1.6 trillion annual expenditures involve a host of competing interests. While arguably the nation offers among the most technologically advanced medical care in the world, the American system consistently under performs relative to its resources. Gaps in financing and service delivery pose major barriers to improving health, reducing disparities, achieving universal insurance coverage, enhancing quality, controlling costs, and meeting the needs of patients and families. Bringing together twenty-five of the nation’s leading experts in health care policy and public health, this book provides a much-needed...
Over the past forty years, the health humanities, previously called the medical humanities, has emerged as one of the most exciting fields for interdisciplinary scholarship, advancing humanistic inquiry into bioethics, human rights, health care, and the uses of technology. It has also helped inspire medical practitioners to engage in deeper reflection about the human elements of their practice. In Health Humanities Reader, editors Therese Jones, Delese Wear, and Lester D. Friedman have assembled fifty-four leading scholars, educators, artists, and clinicians to survey the rich body of work that has already emerged from the field—and to imagine fresh approaches to the health humanities in t...