The Life You Save: Nine Steps to Finding the Best Medical Care-and Avoiding the Worst |  | Author: Patrick Malone
Publisher: Da Capo Lifelong Books
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
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Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 768,332
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1 Original
Pages: 304
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 0738213047
Dewey Decimal Number: 362.1068
EAN: 9780738213040
ASIN: 0738213047
Publication Date: July 7, 2009
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Product Description
Millions of Americans suffer from indifferent, outdated health care; an estimated 40,000 incidents of medical harm happen every day. The good news is that you can prevent this from happening to you or a family member. Better yet, you can find the very best care in the world. Patrick Malone’s sensible advice and real-life anecdotes will inspire you to take charge of your own health care, make the best choices, and avoid serious harm. With the “Necessary Nine”—the essential steps to finding the best medical care—The Life You Save offers vital information such as:
• The single most important question you can ask your doctor
• When to know you have symptoms your doctor should not shrug off
• Checklists to help you get out of the hospital in one piece
• Where to locate the best surgeons and safest hospitals
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 10
Save your life or someone you love July 3, 2009
J. A. Thomson Jr. MD (Charlottesville, Virginia USA)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
As a physician, I strongly recommend that anyone should read and own this book who will visit a doctor, go to an emergency room, be in a hospital, see a specialist, undergo surgery or in any way interact with the health care system personally or on behalf of a family member. So that means everybody. Since this reviewer went to medical school in the 1970's we have had extraordinary and spectacular innovations in medicine. But this explosion in knowledge and skill carries downsides. The probability of error or simply receiving mediocre care increases.
How does any prospective patient find optimal care and avoid the risks of poor outcome or harm? Patrick Malone provides all of us a road map to secure for ourselves and our loved ones the best available primary care providers, specialists, surgeons, hospitals, and standards of practice within a health care system that will grow only more complicated, both for good and ill.
The book is organized around what he calls the necessary nine: (1) get your medical records, read them, and organize them; (2) learn how to talk to your doctor efficiently and effectively by making a list, leaving a list, and taking a list; (3) find the best primary care doctor you can, and he gives you the ways to do this; (4) learn the safe, sensible- and skeptical- approach to using medications; (5) understand why all medical tests are flawed and to seek a second opinion at every crucial crossroad in diagnosis and possible treatment; (6) how to chose a surgeon and the checklist for safe surgery; (7) having an advocate with you at every significant health care encounter, particularly in the hospital; (8) how to steer clear of the major hazards of hospitals and how to find hospitals that maximize safety and quality; and (9) how to educate yourself and audit your care if you develop a chronic disease.
The appendices of the book are little gold mines: Appendix A: 28 things that should never happen in a health care facility. Appendix B: high risk situations in biopsy diagnosis of cancer. Appendix C: 15 steps you can take to reduce your risk of hospital infection.
The richness of the book is in its simplicity and power. The nine steps outlined are easy and available to any thoughtful person, and their power to correct the current problems in your health care and to protect you from disasters is immeasurable. And, if you doubt him, Pat Malone brings it home by case examples that you simply cannot ignore.
Full Disclosure: This reviewer is an acquaintance of the author and had the opportunity to read this wonderful book in draft form. Even before its publication the techniques outlined have helped this reviewer manage his and his family's health care and assisted many of his own patients' forays into other hospitals and specialty clinics. In several instances Pat Malone's system has certainly prevented them and their loved ones from significant problems. Own this book. Keep it handy. JAT, M.D.
A moving and invaluable book June 30, 2009
William Lazarus (Flossmoor, IL)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
With an engaging style and poignant stories, Patrick Malone explains simple steps one can take to obtain excellent medical care, and avoid the many pitfalls of our medical system. In addition to being a fine read, Malone's book is filled with invaluable practical recommendations, within reach of practically all readers. People can obtain their own medical records and test results, and those records often point to flaws in care, or at least point to issues that need to be probed. Everyone can make a list of their questions, and take them to their doctor's office on the next appointment. Everyone can work to insure that their own primary care physician is at least kept in the loop in the ordering of specialty care -- a step that can help avoid unnecessary, sometimes troubled tangents.
Malone brings to his book decades of experience as an attorney representing people who have suffered serious injury as the result of medical negligence and, previously, as a newspaper reporter dedicated to exposing achievements and failures of American medicine. His background shows in the readability, depth, and intelligence of The Life You Save: Nine Steps to Finding the Best Medical Care -- and Avoiding the Worst.
Great Prescriptions, Goes Down Easy July 4, 2009
David O. Stewart (Garrett Park, MD)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Pat Malone started out exposing medical blunders for the Miami Herald, then became a patients' lawyer making doctors and hospitals pay for their mistakes. Now he has written a terrific guide to help people avoid some of those appalling mistakes and their miserable consequences. This is not an exercise in "first, kill all the doctors." Rather, it is a recognition that health care providers are mortal -- sometimes distracted or tired, sometimes not well-informed about a particular patient's problem. Malone strikes a neat balance in this well-written volume. From his own cases, he offers enough heart-breaking stories of medical whiffs to motivate even the most sluggardly patient. But he mostly provides a series of crisp, sensible steps that patients should take to protect themselves by making sure they have the right doctor or hospital, that the doctor has heard what the problem really is, that diagnoses and drug regimens make sense, and that health care providers are following sound protocols.
If you have ever gotten sick, or think you might in the future, this book is worth a close look.
Avoid "A Sea of Broken Hearts" February 1, 2010
John T. James (Houston, TX)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is an exceptional book written by a Washington, D.C lawyer who has prosecuted many malpractice cases. From his decades of insight into what leads to malpractice and harm to patients, he has developed thoughtful ideas on how all Americans can avoid outcomes like those his clients have experienced. His writing flows easily from principles to examples, ending with what he calls "Lifesavers" posted in gray boxes at the end of most chapters.
Frankly, I wish I had known the steps Mr. Malone describes when my son was being treated by his careless cardiologists several years ago. Perhaps then I would be awaiting his return home for Christmas instead of taking my tears to a cemetery once again this Christmas. Do not suppose that the worst medical care will not happen to you or someone you love.
The author clearly "gets it" about the risk you face: "Medical catastrophes have been documented to so pervade the American healthcare system that a realistic risk of needless death or serious injury confronts every family in the United States at some point." The author squarely faces this reality, asserting that one must "take charge of their own health care and not merely turn their bodies over to an impersonal and broken medical industry."
The reader enjoys a journey of enlightenment and tragedy as the nine "necessary" steps emerge from this lawyer's experience: get your medical records, talk effectively to your doctor, find an excellent primary-care doctor, beware of drugs, understand the limitations of medical testing and get second opinions, carefully choose to have surgery, have an advocate with you at critical times, find a good hospital, and take responsibility for management of your chronic diseases.
Much of this is not new; however, Malone's presentation and perspective are refreshing and honest. For example, we are not given the glib statement that the quality of doctors varies. Mr. Malone dedicates a whole chapter to "steering clear of dangerous doctors." He points out what I learned the hard way: "When competence is at issue, only the most flagrant cases get a licensing board's attention." Because of lack of transparency into physician quality, the author recommends a defense that enlists an excellent primary care physician as your quality-assurance warrior.
His description of the quality of FDA-approved medications and the FDA's limited role in protecting you from bad medications should frighten even the most fearless, pill-popping patient. His bottom line: don't be a guinea pig; let someone else be the early users of any new drug unless you and your doctor agree that you have no other choice.
I'm comfortable with basic statistics, but I found the chapter on "understanding the numbers" to be a uniquely enlightening discourse. Mr. Malone explains how we (and often our doctors) misunderstand the value of screening tests. He emphasizes the risk of false positives (indication that there is disease when there is no disease) when low-risk populations are screened. He rightly asserts that to understand statistical information we must "count the people" in each category when we are considering data. One way I do this when I give talks involves the statistics about infant mortality. For example, the one-year infant mortality in Japan is 0.3% and in the United States it is 0.7%. So what? What this means is that if the rate were as low in our country as in Japan, 16,000 more babies would live each year in America. Those are real babies with the hope of a real life, and they have been counted.
Malone's chapter on second opinions should impel you to always seek a second opinion if anything life-changing could be at stake. I trained as a PhD pathologist. Mr. Malone's comments on pathology are accurate. One day in graduate school I was discussing my research with a pathology resident while he was scoring Pap-smear slides for cervical cancer with a microscope. He quickly examined each slide and placed them in various piles, but never interrupted his technical discussions with me. To him the slides were simply work flow, but to the women from whom the smears were taken they could have been life or early death.
When it comes to finding a good hospital the task can be daunting as explained in one chapter. There are websites that give us a glimpse of extreme quality outliers, but typical sites are incomplete or highly limited in scope. The author does give us several search strategies to learn more about local hospitals, but do not get your hopes up for definitive data. The expectation is that one day we will be able to learn enough about hospitals we are considering that we can choose a high-quality institution. In the mean time, use the limited tools available, many of which are provided in this book. In fact, a strong point of the entire book is that it helps us find information on the web.
The next to last chapter "celebrates" the champions of patient safety and quality care. Several of these folks have experienced harm to a loved one and have set out to improve the broken system that harmed their loved one. Their stories are compelling. Others are professionals who recognize the problem. Here is a sobering quote: "Everyone thinks that the problem of mediocre and poor healthcare may happen to somebody else, but not to them. Their own care, many people think is pretty good. [Beth] McGlynn's work proves scientifically that we're all at high risk of poor care."
The final chapter outlines how to find a good malpractice lawyer. You need to read Mr. Malone's data if you think juries often sock innocent doctors with large awards. This is just not so. Of course, your goal must be to apply the book's nine steps so that you never need a lawyer. You may suppose that you do not need this book right now-perhaps so, but why not get a copy for a friend or family member who is struggling to manage a serious illness within our dangerous healthcare non-system.
Learn How To Get The Best Medical Care August 23, 2009
Donna Oliver (Tornado Alley)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
As a Nurse, I found this guide an indispensible reference to use as a patient.
In todays world, it is imperative to have a bedside advocate. The next best thing a patient can have is this book. It is loaded with avenues to obtain the best medical care, and how to know when to ask questions. This should be on everyones bookshelve!
Showing reviews 1-5 of 10
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