The Diagnostician
American Healthcare Is Sick, Misdiagnosed, and Getting Worse; It's Time to Call the Doctor.
Thomas Powell, MD MS · Forewords by David Lubarsky, MD, MBA, and W. Ed Hammond, PhD
The disease was never the technology
American healthcare has a serious illness masquerading as a technology problem. The symptoms can be seen by all: spending and cost, quality, safety, burnout, and low patient satisfaction with the product.
For two decades the prescription has been more technology: a bigger EHR, a new analytics platform, the latest AI tool. Each arrived without a diagnosis of what it was meant to treat.
The Diagnostician applies the oldest tool in medicine, the diagnostic method, to the healthcare system itself: chief complaint, workup, differential, and a working diagnosis committed to in writing. Applied clinical informatics, led by a physician trained to read the whole chart, is the treatment.
When the prescription is hurting the patient, the standard of care is to change the prescription. In healthcare, we keep refilling it.
From the book
Organized like a patient's course
Every chapter closes with Bedside Questions. Each set is a free exam in the Exam Room. Click any chapter to take it.
The Presenting Illness
The Workup
The Making of a Diagnostician
The Therapeutic Armory
From the forewords and early readers
It is the rare book that takes a history, examines the patient, reads the data honestly, and reasons its way to a treatment. It is rarer still in being right.
David A. Lubarsky, MD, MBA · President & CEO, WMCHealth
This is one of the best books I have read. Dr. Powell writes from the perspective of a clinician and an informaticist, and he clearly knows what he is talking about.
W. Ed Hammond, PhD · Director, Duke Center for Health Informatics
The Diagnostician is a must-read for everyone in healthcare, and especially for those searching for solutions to a broken system.
Jacques Orces, DO, MS, FAAP · VP & CMO, Nicklaus Children's Hospital
Choose your edition
Black and white
ISBN 979-8-9961314-1-9
November 3Retail links appear here once each listing is verified.
Black and white
ISBN 979-8-9961314-0-2
November 3Retail links appear here once each listing is verified.
Full-color figures
ISBN 979-8-9961314-3-3
November 3Retail links appear here once each listing is verified.
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Thomas Powell, MD MS
Thomas Powell, MD MS, is a physician executive, career chief medical information officer, consultant, and applied clinical informaticist, with three decades of clinical and operational experience across academic, community, and integrated delivery systems. He is the founder of CMIO, LLC, providing interim executive leadership, consultation, project support, and the Diagnostician method from this book.