Book Review: Transforming Healthcare Through Negotiation by Stacey B. Lee

Transforming Healthcare Through Negotiation

What connection is there between healthcare and negotiation? A lot, this book says, and proposes ways to circumvent it all. Traditional approaches to healthcare has certain shortcomings that ultimately affect patient well-being, ethical principles, resource constraints, and emotional undercurrents that render the system unhealthy. So, there is a need for a transformation approach developed for the healthcare space, if the competing interests of saving lives and patient safety with revenue and existing insurance are to be met satisfactorily.

Part I of the book introduces a novel idea in this regard, the HEAR Approach Framework (Healthcare-Specific Empowerment, Acknowledgment, and Recasting) developed by the author. Here, focus is on eliminating both the shortcomings and the flaws of traditional approaches to healthcare. Part II goes a  little more in depth. Practical strategies for negotiation are analyzed while familiarizing the reader with many tactics and planning tools that are there. Like advanced and specialized steps to address complex challenges and situations. Illustrative examples of real-life hospital scenes are placed imaginatively, making it easy to comprehend all of these.

Book Review: Last Nerve

Last Nerve by Mindy Uhrlaub
This memoir begins with the author's recollection of her ailing mother who is affected by ALS, and the prospect of she herself joining her mother. Enters her husband Kirk, chemotherapy, and quite a few hospital visits, alongwith the welcome pangs and revelries of their growing-up sons. Which is frequently cut-short by a fear - has she passed on the deadly genes to sons Ethan and Alex? Now she feels - my own affair with ALS can wait. 
The book chronicles many battles. Kirk's with cancer, Ethan's with his wilderness therapy and ADHD, of Alex with constant needs of re-assurance, and the author's one of balancing family needs and her therapy, not to speak of other emergencies like fights between brothers. There are also visits from an unending stream of specialists. And also of the author writing and publishing a book.
I found it difficult to put this book down. What came out is a determined fighter on a path to victory against a formidable enemy, who ended the narration with tears of hope.