Physician's Guide to Health Care Management

Written for medical students, residents, and physicians interested in medical management, it covers issues such as the forces shaping health care delivery, physician management skills, economic aspects of managed care, medical, scientific and legal considerations in health care delivery and business aspects of medical management.

With a focus on the skills and theory behind medical management, rather than on specifics, this book is a must-have primer for medical trainees and professionals.

This book answers the growing need for concise, practical information about the business aspects of medicine.

Written for medical students, residents, and physicians interested in medical management, it covers issues such as the forces shaping health care delivery, physician management skills, economic aspects of managed care, medical, scientific and legal considerations in health care delivery and business aspects of medical management.

With a focus on the skills and theory behind medical management, rather than on specifics, this book is a must-have primer for medical trainees and professionals.

Doody Review Services

Reviewer:Eugene C. Rich, MD(Creighton University Medical Center)
Description:This succinct, multiauthored book provides an overview of healthcare management topics of interest to physicians, drawing its authors and framework from the nonresident Masters Program in Health Administration at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Purpose:The authors' stated goal is for this work to "serve as a primer for medical students and house staff..." offering "...practical advice and information necessary to understand the complex aspects of current medical care.
Audience:As indicated by the title, the intended audience is physicians, not only students and residents, but more experienced practitioners. Unfortunately, physicians with any prior training or experience in medical finance, managed care, or quality improvement will likely find this book of limited value.
Features:This multiauthored book of 19 chapters is organized in five sections covering forces shaping health care delivery; physician management skills; economic aspects of managed care; medical, scientific, and legal considerations in health care delivery; and business aspects of medical management. Some individual chapters are excellent ("Historical Aspects of Managed Care"; "Competitive Strategy"; "and Technology Assessment"), but others are less helpful, complicated perhaps by the overall effort at brevity. For example, the chapter on medical ethics provides little discussion of the various conflict-of-interest challenges (financial and other) confronting physicians today. The chapters on statistics and epidemiology are necessarily too abbreviated to serve physicians well, and the book would benefit from much more extensive information on utilization management, quality improvement, and chronic disease management. There is essentially no material on patient safety or medical errors (indeed relevant terms are not to be found in the appendix).
Assessment:Although this work contains some excellent material, because of its limitations, physicians with any prior training or experience in health care management will likely find it of limited value.