This book tells the story of Dr. Sidney Garfield's long and eventful career in turning his desert dream into a thriving and enduring reality that continues to offer a practical model for the future of American health care.
The Story of Dr. Sidney R. Garfield
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle.
Learn more
| |||||||||||||||
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Tom Debley is Director of Heritage Resources for Kaiser Permanente. Trained originally as a journalist, he had a career as an award-winning reporter for many years before moving into public affairs and history work. He has worked on significant historical research and related communication projects for the University of California in addition to Kaiser Permanente. Jon Stewart is Director of Communications for Government Relations and Health Policy at Kaiser Permanente and an editor of The Permanente Journal. Following a long career in daily journalism, he joined Kaiser Permanente as the first communications director for The Permanente Federation, the umbrella organization for all the Permanente Medical Groups, on whose behalf he has championed the history and the promise of Permanente Medicine.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Tom Debley, a former award-winning journalist, is founding director of the Heritage Resources Department at Kaiser Permanente, which maintains the institution's historical archive and knowledge of other archives and holdings that contain important Kaiser Permanente historical records. He is author of The Story of Dr. Sidney R. Garfield: The Visionary Who Turned Sick Care into Health Care (The Permanente Press, 2009) as well as multiple articles on Kaiser Permanente history. A review of his book can be found at: http://www.contracostatimes.com/nildarego/ci_12805277
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Health care reform has long roots,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Story of Dr. Sidney R. Garfield: The Visionary Who Turned Sick Care into Health Care (Paperback)
Sid Garfield's plan for health care reform was so far ahead of its time that the organization he founded -- Kaiser Permanente -- still drives toward the vision, years after his death. (Disclosure: I am senior director of communications and brand management for Kaiser Permanente's Colorado region).
This biography puts today's health care discussion into historical context. As early as the 1930s, reform proposals that threatened the status quo were called "socialized medicine." Garfield and uber-capitalist Henry Kaiser were "socialists" because they came up with a financing system that brought quality health care to working Americans. Workers and their employers "pre-paid" a few cents a day for full coverage. Garfield and his doctors and nurses were thus assured of a predictable revenue stream that enabled them to open clinics and hospitals close to work sites, such as the Grand Coulee Dam in Oregon, the California Aqueduct in the Mojavi Desert and the WW II shipyards in Oakland. The financing mechanism also encouraged Garfield's team to reduce injuries and prevent illness. Workplace safety and the country's earliest screening and vaccination programs blossomed under the arrangement. The smoking cessation, stress reduction and nutrition classes offered by Kaiser Permanente today have their roots in this core emphasis on what Garfield called "Total Health." Garfield's approach brought doctors of all specialties together under one roof. This "group practice" model is the environment in which doctors train, and it only made sense to continue it in day-to-day practice. Today, 60 percent of J.D. Power's top 20 health care systems are group practice models, such as Kaiser Permanente, Mayo and Harvard Pilgrim. I was surprised to learn that Garfield created hospital designs. His put the medical team closer to patients and segregated sterile hallways from public ones. He installed pneumatic tubes so that "medical records will get to the doctor before the patient does." Garfield championed computer-assisted medicine in the 1960s, recognizing that information is the currency of health care. With medical information collected and analyzed, doctors get granular about each patient's needs and they get the big picture about diseases and effectiveness of treatments. Garfield's vision still unfolds today, as Kaiser Permanente recently completed an electronic medical records system that serves more than 8 million patients. But implementation of an EMR is only the first step toward Garfield's vision of a coordinated system of health care rather than sick care. In the next steps, patients use the online access to their records to become more engaged in their health care, physicians and their teams use the information to tailor care precisely to the patient need, and researchers compare the effectiveness of treatment protocols. Ironically, Garfield, who believed his health care model would "keep medicine out of the hands of government bureaucrats," was called a socialist. President Obama, who has said the Kaiser Permanente model is one the nation should emulate, also is called a socialist. Perhaps we need to change the definition of socialist to: One who threatens the status quo. Favorite Garfield quotes: National health insurance, an attractive idea to many Americans, can only make things worse. Medicare and Medicaid -- equivalents of national health insurance for segments of our population -- have largely failed because the surge of demand they created only dramatized and exacerbated the inadequacies of the existing delivery system and its painful shortages of manpower and facilities. It's really time for us to revitalize our plan. I suggest a radical new idea -- that we stop building hospitals and clinics for sick people. Let's concentrate on a brand new type of facility -- a new first in the world. Let us conceive a building for health -- designed, streamlined, and geared to serve our healthy members. This change from episodic crisis sick care to programmed total health care forces a new look at the recording and processing of medical information ... Continuing total health care requires a continuing life record for each individual ... The content of that life record, now made possible by computer information technology, will chart the course to be taken by each individual for optimal health." Note for Kindle users: There are lots of historic B&W photos sprinkled throughout. They show well on the Kindle.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Historical page-turner -- an informative account of the beginnings of U.S. medical care,
By KMaas (California, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Story of Dr. Sidney R. Garfield: The Visionary Who Turned Sick Care into Health Care (Paperback)
I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the early years of health care in the U.S. The book is a fascinating read -- vividly capturing who Sidney Garfield was and the overwhelming contribution he made to medicine. The chapters build Dr. Garfield's character through his early struggles of wanting to be an architect, through real-life accounts, writings, and photos of his growth in becoming a renowned physician. In Garfield's fortuitous encounter with industrialist Henry Kaiser -- to eventually becoming Henry's brother-in-law -- the book brings these men to life as magically as it tells the important history of early group medical practice in the U.S. A real page turner.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great blend of the personal and professional,
This review is from: The Story of Dr. Sidney R. Garfield: The Visionary Who Turned Sick Care into Health Care (Paperback)
Tom Debley's book combines personal information about Dr. Sidney R. Garfield's life with his amazing professional career, which led to the founding with Henry Kaiser of the Kaiser Permanente Medical Care program. Numerous anecdotes and photos tell the story of how Dr. Garfield's vision of a health care program focused on wellness rather than sickness came to fruition - helped by prepayment, group practice, and the use of information technology. As a long-term employee of Kaiser Permanente, I was amazed to see how much of what Dr. Garfield advocated 60 years ago has influenced what's happening today.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
