American healthcare has a serious illness masquerading as a technology problem and Thomas Powell, MD, MS has spent decades as a physician, chief medical information officer, and consultant watching it deteriorate from inside the system where the decisions are made. The symptoms can be seen all around us: healthcare spending and cost, quality, safety, burnout, and low patient satisfaction with the product.
THE DIAGNOSTICIAN applies the oldest tool in medicine, the diagnostic method, to the healthcare system's own dysfunction. Dr. Powell works through the chief complaints of modern healthcare, the vital sign measures of illness, and the laboratory markers hiding in plain sight inside the numbers. He examines how to diagnose and treat modern healthcare issues, what a genuine working diagnosis for American healthcare looks like, and how to stop refilling the empiric prescriptions that have been failing. Applied clinical informatics guided by the Diagnostician is the cure. The Name, Form, Function, and ROI are explored in detail.
Written for everyone who receives healthcare, the physicians and clinicians who treat them, physician executives and informatics professionals, health-system leaders, and national healthcare decision makers. THE DIAGNOSTICIAN is both a clear-eyed diagnosis and a treatment plan for an industry that has mistaken technology for the cure.
"When the prescription is hurting the patient, the standard of care is to change the prescription. In healthcare, we keep refilling it."