Title: Ethically Challenged: Private Equity Storms US Health Care.
Author: Laura Katz Olson.
Publication info: Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 2022.
Location: Academic eBook Collection.
Description: Revealing the dark truth about the impact of predatory private equity firms on American health care.Won Gold from the Axiom Book Award in the Category of Business Ethics, the Benjamin Franklin Awards by the Independent Book Publishers Association and the North American Book Award in the Catergory of Business Finance, Finalist of the American Book Fest Best Book Social Change and Current Events by the American Book FestPrivate equity (PE) firms pervade all aspects of our modern lives. Unlike other corporations, which generally manufacture products or provide services, they leverage considerable debt and other people's money to buy and sell businesses with the sole aim of earning supersized profits in the shortest time possible. With a voracious appetite and trillions of dollars at its disposal, the private equity industry is now buying everything from your opioid treatment center to that helicopter that helps swoop you up from a car crash site. It may even control how and when you can get your kidney dialysis. In Ethically Challenged, Laura Katz Olson describes how PE firms are gobbling up physician and dental practices; home care and hospice agencies; substance abuse, eating disorder, and autism services; urgent care facilities; and emergency medical transportation. With a sharp eye on cost and quality of care, Olson investigates the PE industry's impact on these essential services. She explains how PE firms pile up massive debt on their investment targets and how they bleed these enterprises with assorted fees and dividends for themselves. Throughout, she argues that public pension funds, which provide the preponderance of equity for PE buyouts, tend to ignore the pesky fact that their money may be undermining the very health care system their workers and retirees rely on.Weaving together insights from interviews with business owners and experts, newspaper articles, purchased data sets, and industry publications, Olson offers a unique perspective and appreciation of the significance of PE investments in health care. The first book to comprehensively address private equity and health care, Ethically Challenged raises the curtain on an industry notorious for its secrecy, exposing the nefarious side of its maneuvers.
Title: Sharing Health Data: The Why, the Will, and the Way Forward
Authors: National Academy of Medicine, The Learning Health System Series, Claudia Grossmann, Peak Sen Chua, Mahnoor Ahmed, Sarah M. Greene
Publication Information: Washington, DC: National Academies Press. 2022.
Start reading: Academic eBook Collection.
Description: Sharing health data and information across stakeholder groups is the bedrock of a learning health system. As data and information are increasingly combined across various sources, their generative value to transform health, health care, and health equity increases significantly. Health data have proven their centrality in guiding action to change the course of individual and population health, if properly stewarded and used. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, both data and a lack of data illuminated profound shortcomings that affected health care and health equity. Yet, a silver lining of the pandemic was a surge in collaboration among data holders in public health, health care, and technology firms, suggesting that an evolution in health data sharing is visible and tangible. This Special Publication features some of these novel data-sharing collaborations, and has been developed to provide practical context and implementation guidance that is critical to advancing the lessons learned identified in its parent NAM Special Publication, Health Data Sharing: Building a Foundation of Stakeholder Trust. The focus of this publication is to identify and describe exemplar groups to dispel the myth that sharing health data more broadly is impossible and illuminate the innovative approaches that are being taken to make progress in the current environment. It also serves as a resource for those waiting in the wings, showing how barriers were addressed and harvesting lessons and insights from those on the front lines. In the meantime, knowledge is already available to foster better health care and health outcomes. The examples described in this volume suggest how intentional attention to health data sharing can enable unparalleled advances, securing a healthier and more equitable future for all.
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