A limited but valuable resource for new and experienced doctors interested in the business side of medicine.
A senior ophthalmologist with an EMBA from Georgia State University advises young doctors on the business of medicine.
In this slim, to-the-point volume, Harbin (Waking up Blind, 2009) seeks to fill in the yawning gaps in medical education. Doctors starting out may be well-trained in medicine, he asserts, but typically they’re woefully unprepared for the challenging, unavoidable business aspects of the profession. By his own account, Harbin goes for the big picture and leaves the details for his target audience to work out for themselves. He provides a solid framework for the kinds of choices and business-minded decisions doctors will face not only early in their careers but later on as well. Knowledge of these business aspects, he argues, makes for better, more personally fulfilled doctors, which benefits their patients, too. “This material is just as important as medical knowledge and should be taught at some point during medical training,” Harbin says. Advice includes how to perform due diligence in choosing the right type of practice, how to spot red flags and negotiate contracts, and reasons to check with the spouse before committing to a particular practice or geographic location. Following that are forays into insurance, office efficiency, personal and business finance, and how to deal with troublemaking doctors in a group practice. Also included is counsel on matters such as how to run a good meeting; the key, he says, is a firm time limit. Though well-organized, easy to read and rich in sage advice, the book suffers from a few gaps. A brief mention of the Internet fails to capture the immense changes in the doctor-patient relationship now that medical information can be accessed online; similarly, the relationship between doctors and drug makers gets a light once-over. Medicare, Medicaid and the uninsured go unexplored, and there appears to be little information about the impact of Obamacare, even though it will most certainly alter the industry. Notably, the chapter on ethics doesn’t fill two pages.
A limited but valuable resource for new and experienced doctors interested in the business side of medicine.Pub Date: Dec. 18, 2012
ISBN: 978-1938223679
Page Count: 206
Publisher: Mill City Press
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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