The German health care system is on a collision course with budget realities. Costs are high and rising, and quality problems are becoming ever more apparent. Decades of reforms have produced little change to these troubling trends. Why has Germany failed to solve these cost and quality problems? The reason is that Germany has not set value for patients as the overarching goal, defined as the patient health outcomes achieved per euro expended. This book lays out an action agenda to move Germany to a high value system: care must be reorganized around patients and their medical conditions, providers must compete around the outcomes they achieve, health plans must take an active role in improving subscriber health, and payment must shift to models that reward excellent providers. Also, private insurance must be integrated in the risk-pooling system. These steps are practical and achievable, as numerous examples in the book demonstrate. Moving to a value-based health care system is the only way for Germany to continue to ensure access to excellent health care for everyone.

The U.S. health care system is in crisis. At stake are the quality of care for millions of Americans and the financial well-being of individuals and employers squeezed by skyrocketing premiums—not to mention the stability of state and federal government budgets. In Redefining Health Care, internationally renowned strategy expert Michael Porter and innovation expert Elizabeth Teisberg reveal the underlying—and largely overlooked—causes of the problem, and provide a powerful prescription for change. The authors argue that competition currently takes place at the wrong level—among health plans, networks, and hospitals—rather than where it matters most, in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of specific health conditions. Participants in the system accumulate bargaining power and shift costs in a zero-sum competition, rather than creating value for patients. Based on an exhaustive study of the U.S. health care system, Redefining Health Care lays out a breakthrough framework for redefining the way competition in health care delivery takes place—and unleashing stunning improvements in quality and efficiency. With specific recommendations for hospitals, doctors, health plans, employers, and policy makers, this book shows how to move health care toward positive-sum competition that delivers lasting benefits for all.

Culture has a significant influence on the emerging trends in translation and interpretation. By studying language from a diverse perspective, deeper insights and understanding can be gained. Redefining Translation and Interpretation in Cultural Evolution is a pivotal reference source for the latest scholarly research on culture-oriented translation and interpretation studies in the contemporary globalized society. Featuring coverage on a range of topics such as sociopolitical factors, gender considerations, and intercultural communication, this book is ideally designed for linguistics, educators, researchers, academics, professionals, and students interested in cultural discourse in translation studies.

Each chapter examines the correspondence of a particular psycho-analyst with a particular author.

Disruptive technology is one of the defining economic trends of our age, transforming one major industry after another. But what is the true impact of such disruption on the world's economies, and does it really have the potential to solve global problems such as low growth, inequality and environmental degradation? The provocative answer is that such disruption could indeed solve many of these issues, but that it won't... at least, not on its current trajectory. A Good Disruption highlights some of the huge costs that are at stake, and argues that managing such disruption will be the defining business challenge of the next decade. In order for us to meet that challenge, the book sets out a bold and inspirational vision for a more robust and sustainable economic model. Rich in relevant case studies, and incorporating industry examples from around the world, A Good Disruption accomplishes the remarkable feat of synthesizing key contemporary trends into a coherent world view of how to seize the potential of our collective futures. This is essential reading for policy makers, politicians, business executives and social scientists, as well as anyone who wants a deeper understanding of the impact of disruptive technology and how it can be transformed into a major force for the global good.

​The goal of this open access book is to develop an approach to clinical health care ethics that is more accessible to, and usable by, health professionals than the now-dominant approaches that focus, for example, on the application of ethical principles. The book elaborates the view that health professionals have the emotional and intellectual resources to discuss and address ethical issues in clinical health care without needing to rely on the expertise of bioethicists. The early chapters review the history of bioethics and explain how academics from outside health care came to dominate the field of health care ethics, both in professional schools and in clinical health care. The middle chapters elaborate a series of concepts, drawn from philosophy and the social sciences, that set the stage for developing a framework that builds upon the individual moral experience of health professionals, that explains the discontinuities between the demands of bioethics and the experience and perceptions of health professionals, and that enables the articulation of a full theory of clinical ethics with clinicians themselves as the foundation. Against that background, the first of three chapters on professional education presents a general framework for teaching clinical ethics; the second discusses how to integrate ethics into formal health care curricula; and the third addresses the opportunities for teaching available in clinical settings. The final chapter, "Empowering Clinicians", brings together the various dimensions of the argument and anticipates potential questions about the framework developed in earlier chapters.

For patients and their loved ones, no care decisions are more profound than those made near the end of life. Unfortunately, the experience of dying in the United States is often characterized by fragmented care, inadequate treatment of distressing symptoms, frequent transitions among care settings, and enormous care responsibilities for families. According to this report, the current health care system of rendering more intensive services than are necessary and desired by patients, and the lack of coordination among programs increases risks to patients and creates avoidable burdens on them and their families. Dying in America is a study of the current state of health care for persons of all ages who are nearing the end of life. Death is not a strictly medical event. Ideally, health care for those nearing the end of life harmonizes with social, psychological, and spiritual support. All people with advanced illnesses who may be approaching the end of life are entitled to access to high-quality, compassionate, evidence-based care, consistent with their wishes. Dying in America evaluates strategies to integrate care into a person- and family-centered, team-based framework, and makes recommendations to create a system that coordinates care and supports and respects the choices of patients and their families. The findings and recommendations of this report will address the needs of patients and their families and assist policy makers, clinicians and their educational and credentialing bodies, leaders of health care delivery and financing organizations, researchers, public and private funders, religious and community leaders, advocates of better care, journalists, and the public to provide the best care possible for people nearing the end of life.

This volume of selected articles was released in light of the new economic, social and environmental challenges Europe and the United States have been faced with following the end of the Cold War and in the evolving era of globalization. National security, immigration, and the provision of health and other key social services call for a radically different outlook in terms of policy discussions. The contributors of this book focus on seven key policy issues and challenges that currently affect the United States and Europe: income distribution, the gender pay gap, crime and security, unemployment, health care, the demographic question, and environmental regulation. The purpose of this volume is to analyze how public policy within the European context is responding to the challenges posed by this new global era.

Established as the "bible" of adolescent medicine, Dr. Neinstein's best-selling clinical reference is now in its thoroughly updated Fourth Edition. This practical, easy-to-use guide has been a staple in health care facilities that treat adolescents, is widely used for board preparation, and is one of the basic books recommended by the American College of Physicians for their internal medicine library. New chapters in this edition cover diabetes mellitus (especially type 2), college health, nutritional/herbal supplements, depression and antidepressants, and abnormal Pap smears. Each of this edition's chapters includes listings of Websites where professionals, teenagers, and parents can find up-to-the-minute information.