How Covid Crashed the System: A Guide to Fixing American Health Care - Hardcover

Nash, David B.; Wohlforth, Charles

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1538164256 ISBN 13: 9781538164259

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield, 2022

Synopsis

Why America’s health care system failed so tragically during the Covid pandemic, and how the forces unleashed by the crisis could be just the medicine for its long-term cure.
Covid patients overwhelmed American hospitals. The world’s most advanced and expensive health care system crumbled, short of supplies and personnel. The U.S. lost more patients than any other nation during the pandemic. How could this happen? And how could this disaster lead to a more resilient, rational and equitable health care system in the future?
How Covid Crashed the System answers these questions with compelling stories and wide-angle analysis. Dr. David Nash, a founder of the discipline of population health, and Charles Wohlforth, an award-winning science writer, pick up the pieces of the Covid disaster like investigators of a crashed airliner, finding the root causes of America’s failure to cope, and delivering surprising answers that may reorient how you think about your own health.
From the broadest, cultural flaws that disabled our health system to particular, institutional issues, America’s defenses fell due to racism and poverty, combined with a culture of misguided individualism that tore communities apart. We suffered from failed leadership and crippled public health agencies, and hospitals built to make money from services, not deliver health.
But How Covid Crashed the System goes beyond analyzing those problems, providing hope for change and fundamental improvement in ways that will transform Americans’ health. Covid’s market disruption encouraged new technology that allows for remote health care. Integrated health organizations gained ground, working to manage clients’ total wellness from cradle to grave. Covid also accelerated changes in medical education, to make doctor training more equitable and better aligned to the skills we need. And Covid forced employers to accept responsibility for their workers’ health in a new way, making them partners in this new movement.
Using systemic analysis of the Covid crash, the authors find reasons to hope. America’s health care establishment resisted reform for decades, mired in waste and avoidable errors. Now, the pandemic crisis has exposed its flaws for all to see, creating the opportunities for systemic changes. Even without new laws or government policies, America is moving toward a transformed health system responsible for our wellness. How Covid Crashed the System tells that story.

About this title

About the Author

Charles Wohlforth is a lifelong Alaska resident and author of The Whale and the Supercomputer, winner of the L.A. Times Book Prize, as well as many other books and articles about nature, history, politics, and travel in the North. An avid cross-country skier, Wohlforth lives during the winter in Anchorage with his wife, Barbara, and their four children. In summer they live off the grid on a remote Kachemak Bay shore reachable only by boat. Wohlforth began his career as a reporter for a small-town newspaper. As a reporter for the Anchorage Daily News he worked months in the field covering the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Edition details

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1538164256
• ISBN 13: 9781538164259
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 372