Not What the Doctor Ordered: Liberating Caregivers and Empowering Consumers for Successful Health Reform

by Jeffrey C. Bauer

Overview

This 25^th Anniversary edition completely updates the powerful insights and policy recommendations of Not What the Doctor Ordered, first published in 1993 by renowned healthcare futurist and medical economist the author. It presents specific solutions to serious problems of cost, quality, access, and outcomes by allowing all Americans to purchase services directly from caregivers who provide an expanding array of medical services at least as well as physicians—at lower cost.

Focusing on new realities of the 21^st century, the authorshows not only why giving consumers the right to choose advanced practitioners is the top priority for improving our overpriced, underperforming medical care delivery system, but also how to make the necessary changes. As he clearly and concisely explains from medical and economic perspectives, the key is eliminating physicians’ monopoly powers over advanced practice nurses, clinical pharmacists, physical therapists, clinical psychologists, and other advanced practice (AP) health professionals who now rival physicians in scientific knowledge and caregiving skills within well-defined scopes of practice regulated by state governments.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781138050808
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	06/28/2019
Edition description:	3rd ed.
Pages:	168
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Dr. Bauer is an internationally recognized health futurist and medical economist. As an independent industry thought leader, he forecasts the evolution of health care and develops practical approaches to improving the medical sector of the American economy. He is widely known for his specific proposals to create efficient, effective health care through multi-stakeholder partnerships and other initiatives focused in the private sector.

Dr. Bauer has more than 275 publications on health care delivery. His latest books are a 25^th anniversary update of his best seller, Not What the Doctor Ordered: Liberating Caregivers and Empowering Consumers for Successful Health Reform (2019), Paradox and Imperatives in Health Care: Redirecting Reform for Efficiency and Effectiveness (2015), and Upgrading Leadership’s Crystal Ball: Five Reasons Why Forecasting Must Replace Predicting and How to Make the Strategic Change in Business and Public Policy (2014). Previous books include Statistical Analysis for Health Care Decision-Makers (CRC Press, 2009) and Telemedicine and the Reinvention of Health Care: The Seventh Revolution in Medicine (McGraw-Hill, 1999).

As a consultant, he has assisted hundreds of provider, purchaser, and payer organizations with strategic planning and performance improvement initiatives. He served as Vice President for Health Care Forecasting and Strategy for ACS, a Xerox Company, from 1999 to 2010. His own consulting firm, The Bauer Group, specialized in consumer-focused strategic planning and clinical affiliation agreements for multi-hospital networks from 1984 to 1992.

In addition, Dr. Bauer was a full-time teacher and administrator at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver from 1973 to 1984, where he held appointments as associate professor and Assistant Chancellor for Planning and Program Development. He also served for four years as Health Policy Adviser to Colorado Governor Richard D. Lamm. From 1992 to 1999, Dr. Bauer was a visiting professor in Administrative Medicine at the Medical School of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Colorado-Boulder. He graduated from Colorado College in Colorado Springs with a B.A. in economics and completed a certificate in political studies at the University of Paris (France). During his academic career, he was a Boettcher Scholar, a Ford Foundation Independent Scholar, a Fulbright Scholar (Switzerland), and a Kellogg Foundation National Fellow. He is an honorary Fellow in the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners. Dr. Bauer lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where he spends his spare time painting (conceptual art in acrylics) and playing the viola da gamba (precursor to the cello). He is an active member of the Board of Directors of the Madison Symphony Orchestra.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction and Background: 25 Years Later. 2. Medical Monopoly: What the Doctor Ordered. 3. The Medical Marketplace: Learning Lessons of History. 4. Captain of The Ship: Legal Foundations of Independent Practice. 5. Advanced Practitioners: Health Professionals Whose Time Has Come. 6. Case Studies.

Editorial Reviews

Reviewer: Carole A. Kenner, PhD, RN, FAAN, FNAP, ANEF (The College of New Jersey)
Description: This book argues that consumers must be actively involved in addressing issues of access, cost, quality, and outcomes of the current healthcare system. Caregivers and consumers are shown how to effect healthcare reform. Previous editions of this book were published in 1998 and 1993.
Purpose: The book proposes to enlighten caregivers and consumers about the how the purchasing of healthcare services should expand beyond physicians to advanced practice nurses and pharmacists in particular. Economic and medical perspectives are used to illustrate key points. These worthy objectives are met through narrative and case studies.
Audience: The audience is caregivers, consumers, employers of health professionals, and policymakers. The author is a highly respected health economist.
Features: The writing style engages readers and breaks down complex issues into understandable pieces. The book starts with a historical perspective, covering the 25 years since the first edition appeared, and then moves on to key concepts, medical dominance and the position of the physician as the keeper of all healthcare to marketplace changes, followed by a description of advanced practice nurses including nurse anesthetists, nurse midwives, pharmacists, psychologists, and physical therapists and their evolving place in healthcare reform. Case studies and additional readings (used in place of chapter references) add context to these concepts.
Assessment: Many books present healthcare reform or economics but none illustrate the role of caregivers and consumers in this process like this one does. Updates to this edition reflect the myriad changes that the U.S. has seen in healthcare in the 20 years since the second edition.

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