The Doctor Crisis ─ How Physicians Can, and Must, Lead the Way to Better Health Care

"In our nation's effort to improve health care quality, access and affordability, the doctor crisis is routinely overlooked. More than 80 percent of doctors say that the medical profession is "in decline." Three in five would like to quit. Kaiser Permanente, one of the world's leading health care providers, is an object lesson in the complex and frustrating challenges facing so many health care organizations today. When Dr. Jack Cochran took over leadership of the Colorado Permanente Medical Group in themid-1990s, he oversaw high-quality medical teams providing excellent care, but dealt with organizational troubles so deep rooted that patients and physicians fled in droves. In The Doctor Crisis, Cochran, now executive director of The Permanente Federation, and author Charles Kenney show how we can improve health care on a grass roots level, regardless of political policy disputes, by improving conditions for physicians and asking them to take on broader accountability. Doctors, they argue, are the key to making health care in the United States truly great, and we must do all we can to preserve and enhance the careers of physicians. They clarify the steps needed to take to support doctors so that they can focus on patient care, and offer concrete ideas for creating an environment and establishing systems that encourage doctors to put patients' needs above all else. Solving the doctor crisis is at the core of our ability as a nation to reach the major goals to which we aspire. We must solve it to improve the patient experience and health outcomes. And we must solve it to successfully implement the Affordable Care Act"--Provided by publisher.