Prepare to Defend Yourself . How to Navigate the Healthcare System and Escape with Your Life

Do you really need to pay that outstanding balance with the hospital? Do you know the differences between a nurse practitioner, a physician’s assistant, a physician, and a paramedic? Did you realize that not all hospitals can treat your stroke, heart attack, or trauma with equal speed and effectiveness? How should you negotiate and appeal a hospital charge? Can you do anything to minimize the medical mistakes that your provider might commit?

In Prepare to Defend Yourself . . . How to Navigate the Healthcare System and Escape with Your Life, Matthew Minson, a physician and disaster medicine and healthcare policy expert, pulls back the examination room curtain on the healthcare system, empowering patients and their families to become proactive and knowledgeable users of medical services. Written in a humorous, patient-friendly style and loaded with the author’s cartoons and other visual aids, this essential consumer’s guide to modern healthcare provides down-to-earth, accurate advice that any reader can use, whether preparing for surgery, dialing 911, or simply getting a prescription filled.

 

MATTHEW MINSON, MD, is the Senior Advisor for Health Affairs at the Texas Engineering Extension Service and is Adjunct Assistant Professor of Health Policy Management in the School of Public Health at the Texas A&M Health Science Center. As medical director for Texas Task Force One, a FEMA and State of Texas urban search and rescue team, he has been deployed to numerous disaster sites, such as the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, the Columbia space shuttle recovery, and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.