Managing Your Doctor: The Smart Patient's Guide to Getting Effective Affordable Healthcare

Getting effective, error free affordable healthcare is challenging. Managing Your Doctor is here to help. An information overload no doctor can keep up with; endless manipulations by drug and medical device companies; a take over by profit seeking corporations; laws that disadvantage the patient; an epidemic of medical and billing errors combine with the ever increasing complexity of medicine all contribute to the problem. The antidote is the right information – which this book provides, divided into sections on getting the right doctor; diagnosis; information; treatment; price; future; even the right death (as terminal care is notoriously badly handled) and advice on a home medical kit.

Born in England, educated in a "do-as-you-like" school (Dartington Hall) then gaining a medical education at prestigious Guys Hospital in London he worked on 4 continents before moving to the US in 1982, completing residency in family practice at SUNY at Stony Brook. After more than 40 years, most of them "in the trenches" of primary care, he has developed an interest in coaching patients to help themselves and throw off the ingrained notion that "the doctor knows best." Since retiring from full time practice in Stafford, Virginia, he has become volunteer medical director of the Lloyd Moss Free Clinic, writes regular medical columns for two local newspapers and has worked on the concept of what he calls 'medical emancipation' to help patients get the effective affordable healthcare and writing this health guide.