Christine K. Cassel, M.D., is President and CEO of the American Board of Internal Medicine and ABIM Foundation.
A practitioner of geriatric medicine for more than 30 years, Cassel (president & CEO, American Board of Internal Medicine; The Culture of Caregiving) argues that her specialty provides a model for the way Medicare can be improved and expanded. Geriatricians promote healthy lifestyles, manage chronic conditions, and provide personalized palliative and end-of-life care. In doing so, they both improve patients' quality of life and lower costs. The present system of compensation under Medicare, Cassel contends, drives care toward more expensive and often unnecessary procedures while discouraging low-tech care (e.g., having extended conversations with patients and families; coordinating caregivers). What's more, universal coverage exists-inefficiently, as in emergency care-but is generally not acknowledged. The government, she says, should set broad goals and decide on financing, letting professionals handle the medical care in an evidence-based manner. More focused on Medicare and with more of a clinician's perspective than David M. Cutler's Your Money or Your Life: Strong Medicine for America's Health Care System, this clearly written and documented book is recommended for public and academic libraries.-Dick Maxwell, Porter Adventist Hosp. Lib., Denver Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
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