We hope that everyone with a stake in making healthcare delivery work better will find this book useful. That being said, we wrote it with a primary audience in mind: the people who spend their days (and nights) caring for patients. At the beginning of the 21st century, healthcare professionals are able to deploy an extraordinary range of medical capabilities. The problem is that sometimes our capabilities stretch beyond what we are able to afford financially, physically, and morally. As the adage goes, just because we can do something does not always mean that we should do something.
This book is not an introduction to healthcare policy. It is not an introduction to healthcare economics. It is not an introduction to healthcare finance. Those books already exist. We are instead focused on value-based care—the idea that healthcare needs reform not only in the halls of government or the suites of executives but in the wards and clinics where care is provided. Value-based care requires that those of us who care for patients optimize healthcare outcomes while also taking direct and specific responsibility for costs and patient experiences.
Drs. Neel Shah and Chris Moriates from our Costs of Care team were two of the founding editors for the “Teachable Moments” series in JAMA Internal Medicine
This article series launched in 2014 and is intended to educate medical trainees about the harms that result from overuse and underuse of health services. The primary author of each article must be a medical trainee. The ongoing series has now published well more than 100 articles, and now includes a rotating editorial fellowship program for internal medicine chief residents.
