The Doctor Crisis: How Physicians Can, and Must, Lead the Way to Better Health Care - Jack Cockhran

The American health care system is in crisis, and at the center are doctors who are increasingly dissatisfied, burned out and unable to provide the level of care they would like to provide. These dynamics are examined, along with the potential solution, in The Doctor Crisis: How Physicians Can, and Must, Lead the Way to Better Health Care.

Written by Kaiser Permanente surgeon Jack Cochran, MD, FACS, executive director of The Permanente Federation, representing the Permanente Medical Groups that employ more than 17,000 physicians, and award-winning health care author Charles Kenney, “The Doctor Crisis” is a rallying cry for health care reform — from a physician who knows firsthand the toll that modern-day challenges are taking on the medical community and the patients they serve.

Because physician dissatisfaction and burnout can ultimately result in poor outcomes for patients, the doctor crisis doesn’t just affect doctors. Solving it is a prerequisite to transforming the U.S. health care system to provide quality health care that is accessible and affordable. The book urges health care organizations to restructure, reduce bureaucracy, and increase transparency and support for physicians, who are uniquely qualified to heal and to lead this evolution from Industrial Age medicine to Information Age medicine.

Dr. Cochran illustrates how he cured a large, regional, multispecialty practice of a “persistent fever of disaffection among doctors” in a compelling case study that shows how smart business methods helped avert a systemic crisis. Eliminating cynicism and welcoming constructive dissent are two keys to encouraging medical teams to collaborate and ensure that each member is acting at the highest level of skill, which supports patient-centered care and professional satisfaction.

“The Doctor Crisis” provides a call to action for physicians to embrace the expanded role of healer, leader and partner. By recognizing and fostering key strengths within a team, partnering with administrators and academics, and embracing technology, physicians can lead the way to better care not just for individuals, but for whole populations — in new ways and in new settings.
The book also makes the case for sharing the responsibility of patient care with other caregivers, health plans and policymakers as a part of a Learning Coalition. The authors outline how physicians have the responsibility, and unique opportunity, to shape the future of health care and to create systems of patient-centered care that are safe, equitable, accessible and affordable.