The simplest, most-readable guide to navigating health care delivery in the United States One of the most popular resources of its kind, Understanding Health Policy: A Clinical Approach provides everything you need to master the U.S. health care system’s nuances and complexities. Written by practicing primary care physicians who are experts in health care policy, this comprehensive guide covers the entire scope of the U.S. health care system and draws on lessons from systems in other nations. New content in this fully updated edition includes deeper coverage of: • Cost and financing issues, with an emphasis on how it impacts the U.S. economy • Public health systems, including a discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on health policy and delivery • Social determinants of health and disparities • Professional burnout and its impact on health care delivery • The Affordable Care Act, Accountable Care Organizations, and system consolidation Packed with clinical vignettes highlighting key policy issues and clarifying difficult concepts, Understanding Health Policy weaves key principles, descriptions, and concrete examples into chapters that make vital health policy issues interesting and understandable. Whether you’re a student, medical practitioner, or public policy professional, you will come away with a clearer, more systematic way of thinking about our health care system, its biggest challenges, and the most effective ways of making it better for everyone.
Almost half a century ago, policy leaders issued the Declaration of Alma Ata and embraced the promise of health for all through primary health care (PHC). That vision has inspired generations. Countries throughout the world—rich and poor—have struggled to build health systems anchored in strong PHC where they were needed most. The world has waited long enough for high-performing PHC to become more than an aspiration; it is now time to deliver. The COVID-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic has facilitated the reckoning for that shared failure—but it has also created a once-in-a-generation opportunity for transformational health system changes. The pandemic has shown policy makers and ordinary citizens why health systems matter and what happens when they fail. Bold reforms now can prepare health systems for future crises and bring goals such as universal health coverage within reach. PHC holds the key to these transformations. To fulfill that promise, however, the walk has to finally match the talk. Walking the Talk: Reimagining Primary Health Care after COVID-19 outlines how to get there. It charts an agenda to reimagined, fit-for-purpose PHC. It asks three questions about health systems reform built around PHC: Why? What? How? The characteristics of high-performing PHC are precisely those that are most critical for managing the pressures coming to bear on health systems in the post-COVID world. The challenges include future outbreaks and other emergent threats, as well as long-term structural trends that are reshaping the environments in which systems operate in noncrisis times. Walking the Talk highlights three sets of megatrends that will increasingly affect health systems in the coming decades: • Demographic and epidemiological shifts • Changes in technology • Citizens’ evolving expectations for health care. Reimagined PHC systems will be equipped through optimized system design, financing, and delivery to ensure high-quality services, care to address patients’ needs, fairness and accountability, and resilient systems.
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