Humanising Healthcare

Imprint: Triarchy Press
Published: 11th December 2014
Format: Paperback ~ List Price: £12.00
152 pages ~ Size: 14 x 21.6 cm
ISBN: 978-1-909470-44-6

Humanising Healthcare: Patterns of Hope for a System Under Strain
Margaret Hannah

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Humanising Healthcare:
Patterns of Hope for a System Under Strain
Margaret Hannah

A practical strategy for transforming the UK and other healthcare systems... offering an affordable, sustainable and compassionate alternative to the present mess.

Healthcare systems across the developed world are in trouble. Changing patterns of disease, an ageing population and advances in drugs and technology feed an inexorable rise in costs outrunning our best efforts to contain them.
At a human level the system is coming under intolerable strain. Demands for cost savings squeeze out the time and humanity needed for good care and quality relationships. Safety suffers. Staff become demoralised, stressed and burned out.

In the first two parts of Humanising Healthcare and focusing on the UK's National Health Service, Dr Hannah explores the fundamental assumptions which have brought us to this point and which likewise inform our current inadequate responses. She dissects the burgeoning regime of regulation and inspection that tries to impose ever tighter controls on a healthcare system that needs to be freed to serve its citizen patients.

In the final part of the book, ‘Another Way Is Possible’, Dr Margaret Hannah offers a practical alternative strategy based on numerous examples of transformative practice from the UK and around the world. It promises a sustainable culture of healthcare that will enable us all to live healthy, fulfilled lives at a fraction of the current cost.

Nuka
Chief among Dr Hannah's case studies is the ‘Nuka’ model of care in
Alaska. Healthcare in the Nuka system is based on reconnecting people into the web of life. Don Berwick, a former health adviser to President Obama and a founder of the highly respected Institute for Healthcare Improvement, has declared that Nuka “is probably the leading example of healthcare redesign in the world. US healthcare suffers from high costs and low quality. This system has reversed that: the quality of care is the highest I have seen anywhere in the world, and the costs are highly sustainable. It’s extraordinary. It is surely leading healthcare to its new and proper destination.”

Introduction

Part 1: The Contemporary Challenge

The House that Modern Medicine Built
Overweight and Overwhelmed
Costing an Arm and a Leg

Part 2: The Response

The Brakes are Failing
Regulation, Inspection and the Fight Against Error
RCTs: A Self-Limiting Improvement Methodology

Part 3: Another Way is Possible

The Patterning of Hope
Designing for Transition
Creating the Future

Humanising Healthcare is exquisitely illustrated by artist and IFF member Jennifer Williams.

Readership

Policy makers and advisers, leaders in organisations in the public and private sector, futurists and anyone with an interest in change and planning in society at large.

The Author
The Introduction
Reviews of the book
Update 2015

Related Titles:
All Intl. Futures Forum titles

Early Reviews

"Contemporary medicine has lost sight of the central role of human relationships within healthcare. In this profoundly important book, Margaret Hannah explores both the destructive effects of this loss and the ways in which strong interpersonal relationships can be recreated and once again become the foundation of appropriate and affordable healthcare."
Iona Heath, former President of the Royal College of General Practitioners (UK)

"This book has the potential to shake to the foundations our system of healthcare.
Individuals and communities hold in their own hands many of the answers to preventing disease and promoting health and well-being. This book brings hope and a very practical plan for a sustainable, effective, efficient, health system."
Mary Renfrew, Professor of Mother and Infant Health, University of Dundee

"It is a sad truth that healthcare systems across the world are often not accessed by those who need them most, don’t work as well as they could and are increasingly unaffordable. This book provides an excellent and extremely readable account exploring the underlying issues. Importantly, it also contains exciting ideas as to how we might do better in the future."
Patrick H Maxwell, Regius Professor of Physic & Head of the School of Clinical Medicine, University of Cambridge