Reviews for The Corporate Transformation of Health Care: Issues and Directions, Vol. 1

The average rating for The Corporate Transformation of Health Care: Issues and Directions, Vol. 1 based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-03-09 00:00:00 Joseph Edington I'll second the endorsements quoted in the goodreads summary: I recommend this to anyone professionally involved in social services. This book was written in 1981, so of course there's no material about the decades since. It's up to someone else to fill in the details for the last few years, but it will take someone of Levine's experience, insight and integrity to do it right. The book is not a particularly easy read for someone outside of the field, so I would really only recommend this to professionals who have struggled with these issues firsthand and perhaps to students who are specializing in this topic (but I'll caution that without firsthand experience as guidance, it's very easy to dismiss some of the uglier or unpleasant material discussed). Levine's aim is to provide an objective and thorough account of the history and politics of social services in the United States and the social structures in effect. I think he did a commendable job by digging into the history in earnest without finger pointing or trying to push his own political agenda. While so many of us in the field like to see ourselves as "the good guys," (always heroes, sometimes martyrs), the simple fact is that the story is far more complex than any one of can sum up or easily address, and that there are major questions without easy answers. Social Services employs many thousands of workers, so this field is a major economic sector with its own interest. Like it or not it is a reality, and social service labor unions are well aware of it. Small towns and large cities both have an interest in it, as they have a responsibility to care for those in need, but also they have real constraints from limited resources (tax money, property, and political capital; there's no easy answer to how much burden citizens are willing to shoulder before they decide to "pull the plug" and push the responsibility on another locality or just put someone into office who asks for less). This is just one of the many issues covered, but it's a fair example of what this book covers. The book was a challenge to read, and maybe it could have been made a little easier, a little more accessible to reach a wider audience. But that's my only real reservation about it. Overall, Levine took on the task of telling the story behind what you do as social service professionals (or perhaps, talking about the elephant in the room?), and he did it compellingly. I've yet to find a comparable effort by another writer and I hope someone else steps up in a next few years.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-01-30 00:00:00 Kimberly Gari As a retired Clinical and Public Health Microbiologist, I can say that this writer knows the subject. So I can recommend this book. But the reader should be warned, this book is quite technical and very detailed, and really very disturbing. In this busy world, I think some important facts about MRSA and other "superbugs" can get lost in the detail. What facts? Well MRSA is not just a problem of sick people getting infected in hospitals, which was the case 15 years ago when I left the hospital lab. Today MRSA can be acquired by healthy people in the outside community. So MRSA is a problem of the whole community, not just the sick community. It has grown into a Public Health problem, and Public Health departments are being cut right and left. Another fact: Pharmaceutical companies are not looking for newer antimicrobials to use against MRSA or other superbugs that will pop up. Why not? No profit: Antimicrobials need to be used sparingly, and newer ones need to be kept in reserve, so there is no profit for developing new and better bullets to use against these threats. This author does a good job describing this situation and I think she is one of our finest journalists in the field of infectious disease. But I am less hopeful about the future of healthcare in my country after reading the book than I was before reading it. Despite so-called "reforms" the fact of life is that miracle-cures don't remain effective for long. This book shows how resistance to penicillin occurred soon after that miracle drug was developed, and methicillin-resistance followed soon later. Now we have vancomycin-resistance, etc. On and on. So don't depend on miracles for your healthcare. Act preventively. Handwashing helps. Staying out of crowds helps even more. Staying out of the hospital is really the biggest thing you can do to keep your health as long as possible, but sooner or later most of us will get sick and end up in the hospital. That is a fact of life. Hospital stays will increase. So will superbug infections. I Highly recommend this disturbing book!