★★★★★ 5
Intellectual Dishonesty, Malfeasance, and Conflicts of Interest...
Format: Hardcover
In "How We Do Harm,' author Otis Webb Brawley, M.D., shares his healthcare system experience from his early days at the Pritzker School of Medicine (University of Chicago), as a resident at University Hospitals of Cleveland, as a fellow at the National Cancer Institute, and as a physician specializing in medical oncology at Grady Hospital in Atlanta. Brawley has both the experience and credentials to call our attention to the systemic failures of a system that our politicians call the "best in the world (ignorance is elegant)." He is recognized as an outstanding physician-scientist who serves today as the chief medical and scientific officer of the American Cancer Society, and as professor of hematology, oncology, medicine, and epidemiology at Emory University
In this book, the author takes the reader on a "guided tour of the back rooms" of the American healthcare system. He charges that "no incident failure in American medicine should be dismissed as an aberration...failure is the system, a system in which helping patients is not the point. Economic incentives dictate that the patient be ground up as expensively as possible with the goal of maximizing the cut of every practitioner who gets involved." Brawley's view is that of skeptic and health-reform advocate.
Brawley uses his personal experience and stories to show how our system "fails to provide care when care is needed and fails to stop expensive, often unnecessary, and frequently harmful interventions." He feels one antidote to sure the ills of the system would be to base the system on science. His stories include:
1. The treatment provided to a woman whose breast fell-off due to cancer.
2. Misguided collegiality among physicians. "Should I tell the patient that the previous doctor was incompetent? And get hauled into court for slander?"
3. The saving of Mr. Huzjak whose daughter, despite his condition, wants everything to be done to save his life. "We never give up" when the humane thing is to give up.
4. The Wallet Biopsy - the reason why people are turned away from private hospitals and end up at public hospitals like Grady.
5. Treating colon cancer Colon Cancer. "If you are poor, black, and uninsured, you get no care until its too late. But if you are rich, white, and insured, you face another deadly menace, doctors (some socially prominent) who are just plain bad. Expensive drugs and tests that patients don't need."
6. The implantable defibrillator, and the growing disparity between the insured and the uninsured which increases as technology improves.
7. Procrit, Nexium, Vioxx, Intensity Modulation Radiation Therapy and other approved drugs and therapies that are leading patients to serious complications, and/or a worsening of disease, or death. And how overtreatment may be beneficial to everyone but the patient - doctors, hospitals, and the pharmaceutical industry.
8. The perverse incentive system in which has extended the standards of care enormously from three decades ago due to the willingness of insurance companies to pay and the willingness of private physicians to make a buck.
Brawley, by "breaking the ranks about being sick in America," points to his Jesuit education as a foundational experience for his life journey. A Jesuit teacher, Fr. Richard Polakowski, early in his life taught "Say what you know, what you don't know, and what you believe - and label it accordingly." Along the way, Brawley developed a set of maxims what would shape his life:
1. Be a man for others. Find work where you can make a difference. Use your God-given gifts to improve the lot of others. Always focus on improving the lot of others. Do this for the greater glory of God.
2. Be binary, know right and wrong. Be truthful. Have the courage to speak truth to power.
3. Never worry about people thinking you are different. Realize, people, both black and white, will try to discourage you. They will try to get at your self- confidence.
4. You will be tested. Always know your subject matter better than anyone else. You must be good. You must stand up to scrutiny.
5. Do not let the naysayers make you feel you cannot do something. They will call you arrogant. They will call you aloof. They will question your intelligence...spite them by succeeding.
6. Do not tolerate fools. Don't compromise on excellence.
7. Never let people put you down.
8. Feel sorry for people who see no challenges to overcome. Feel sorry for the selfish. Feel sorry for the fools. Remember you have character they cannot understand. Relish you have overcome challenges they could never overcome.
As someone who has worked for over 40 years in healthcare, Brawley's book resonated with some of my own experiences. His perspective, while not inclusive, has great value. However, he fails to note the role of government in shaping the system we have today - diagnosis related groups (DRGs), resource-based relative value scale (RBRVS), CMS CP codes, Medicare and Medicaid cost shifting, and, for me personally, the role of the FDA in driving up the cost of medical innovation. Much of what he describes as systemic failure can be attributed to government intervention. The private sector's greediness is a response, much like Wall Street's and the public's greedy response to the government's "everyone should own a home" policy which led to the Great Recession of 2007-2009.
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Reviewed in the United States on October 30, 2012