Book Reviewers
Greg Scandlen
richard reece, MD (Deceased, Aug. 26, 2022)
Donald Gehrig, MD
Putting the CARE Back in Health Care
This book could not be more timely, from my point of view. It is a perfect companion to my Myth Busters book. Where my book looks at the failure of evolving public policy in health care from the 20,000-foot level, this book looks at the same phenomena from the ground level - the impact on patients and e
Putting the CARE Back in Health Care
This book could not be more timely, from my point of view. It is a perfect companion to my Myth Busters book. Where my book looks at the failure of evolving public policy in health care from the 20,000-foot level, this book looks at the same phenomena from the ground level - the impact on patients and especially on physicians.
Download the rest of the review below.
Donald Gehrig, MD
richard reece, MD (Deceased, Aug. 26, 2022)
Donald Gehrig, MD
Has the Canary Died?
I highly recommend this new book by Lee Beecher, MD and David Racer, MLitt. It is, quite literally, about the care of those who suffer by those who suffer to care. So, Passion for Patients, by Alethos Press, St Paul, MN, 2017, is a very appropriate title and worthy of one's attention.
Download the rest of the review below.
richard reece, MD (Deceased, Aug. 26, 2022)
richard reece, MD (Deceased, Aug. 26, 2022)
richard reece, MD (Deceased, Aug. 26, 2022)
A Story Worth Reading
Whenever I read a book review, I ask myself: What is the book about? Is it worth its price? What are the biases of its reviewer?
This book is the story of the 40-year career of Dr. Lee Beecher, a clinical psychiatrist. It is the story of how managed care and ObamaCare has affected Dr. Beecher's practice and how it has
A Story Worth Reading
Whenever I read a book review, I ask myself: What is the book about? Is it worth its price? What are the biases of its reviewer?
This book is the story of the 40-year career of Dr. Lee Beecher, a clinical psychiatrist. It is the story of how managed care and ObamaCare has affected Dr. Beecher's practice and how it has altered and disrupted the practices of other physicians.
Download the rest of the review below.
psychiatry today review by rodrigo A. munoz, md (Deceased Nov. 28, 2020)
March 10, 2017
Read the review at Clinical Psychiatry News
Publish date: March 10, 2017
The title of the book, “Passion for Patients,” by Lee H. Beecher, MD, DLFAPA, FASAM, with writer Dave Racer, MLitt (St. Paul, Minn., Alethos Press, 2017), clearly represents Dr. Beecher’s approach to his professional life: His focal interest has been his patients ever since he went to medical school and started a very long and successful practice.
Dr. Beecher’s years of practice encompass many of the changes that the practice of medicine has seen in the last 50 years.
He attended medical school when an office was the place where a physician and his patients would get together to exchange thoughts, feelings, ideas, and plans so that they would eventually work together directly and unencumbered on the same concepts that they share and that they considered crucial to their relationship.
Shortly after Dr. Beecher graduated, Medicaid and Medicare came into medical practice, together with progressive limitations, threats, and a great many unwelcome interlopers, whose mission drastically changed the doctor-patient relationship. No matter how one examines the actions of the numerous new participants – be they auditors, insurance companies, employers, or money managers – one of their main missions was to modify, qualify, re-identify, and limit the interaction between the doctor and the patient.
In one of his last actions as president of the United States, Richard M. Nixon signed the Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) Act of 1973 into law. The new law, seen as an answer to the “health care crisis of the late 1960s” , made federal assistance available to participating group practices and medical foundations that provided prepaid care (Soc Sci & Med. 1976;10:129-42). Dr. Beecher sees HMOs as a major source of limitation, if not strangulation, of medical care. From the 2017 vantage point, many years after the introduction of HMOs, we can easily examine the results on medical practice: psychotherapy has been practically eliminated in psychiatric practice, follow-up visits have been reduced to 15 minutes, and the richness of the doctor-patient relationship has been diminished – to the point of extinction in many places.
“What is amazing – and contrary to truth – about the current evolution of medical care reform is its manifold references to safeguarding the best interests of the patient,” Dr. Beecher wrote. “On the contrary, the medical care reformers in current vogue see the physician as but one cog in the production of a specified medical care outcome – a cog that must be greased by evidence-based medicine and managed by analytical applications derived from data, cured in the crucible of number crunching, and controlled by payment systems.”
