7 STEPS TO YOUR BEST POSSIBLE HEALTHCARE

A thoughtful, comprehensive guide to taking control of your health and making better-informed healthcare decisions.

Confusing, complicated and often slow-moving, today’s medical system can be ineffective and frustrating for even the savviest healthcare consumer. This practical guide can make maneuvering around–even mastering–that system easier. No doubt it’s Russo’s 20 years of experience as a lawyer and health-management expert that gives her the authoritative, yet friendly, voice she uses to offer reliable, well-researched information on everything from choosing the best medical provider, to effectively communicating with physicians, to managing health information. Interspersed stories about her daughter’s struggle with epilepsy illustrate the many challenges patients and loved ones can face. Though even with this human touch and storyline, it’s not a book most will read cover to cover. Early chapters like “Becoming a Visionary Healthcare Consumer” and “Playing an Active Role in Creating Your Healthcare Story” may not appeal to those looking for nuts-and-bolts advice on more pressing issues, such as how to get a second a opinion or care when you’re uninsured. The structure allows readers to tackle chapters in any order. For example, those more interested in complementary medicine than medical coding can skip the latter, choosing instead to read about the “Six Principals of Naturopathic Medicine” or “Five Major Types of Complementary and Alternative Medicine.” Throughout, charts, diagrams and graphics make complex medical information easier to understand. And for those impatient with the author’s frequently wordy prose, each chapter ends with a review of key ideas and recommended actions. Names of health-related books, websites, agencies and businesses Russo has found useful are also listed, including an oddly out-of-place directory of raw-food experts. But from someone whose five previous books deal with medical record-keeping and coding (most recently Management of Medical Records, 2006), it’s a hard point to criticize. Tips on where to find ice cream made from coconut meat and agave adds an appealing, quirky touch.

The right prescription to start, or add to, a home health library.