If the public only knew what really goes on...

Book review by R. Scott Lorenz ("Book Publicist") on Amazon

Unaccountable: What hospitals won't tell you & how transparency can revolutionize health care

In "Unaccountable," Dr. Makary discusses how common sense solutions can fix the health care system by empowering patients with information to choose where to go for their medical care. The problem is the health care industry hides and protects bad doctors, bad practices and bad outcomes.

If the public only knew what really goes on, you would be shocked. In my line of work, I am privy to settlements between hospitals and patients who have been harmed. One element in all these settlements is confidentiality. Nobody can say anything about the lawsuit, the amount of the settlement or anything. How does the withholding of that information help the public? It doesn't.

The transparency that Dr. Makary talks about is what is needed. But changing the way medicine is done in the USA won't happen overnight. I highly recommend that everyone read "Unaccountable, and if you find this of interest, another book along the same lines is "Getting Over Going Under, 5 things you MUST know before anesthesia" by Dr. Barry Friedberg that covers his 20+ year struggle to change just one item in health care; i.e. getting hospitals to use a brain monitor during surgery.

Hats off to both doctors for shedding light on the culturally ingrained obfuscation of the truth.