Health Care USA: Understanding Its Organization and Delivery, Third Edition differentiates itself from other health delivery texts with its public health and population-based approach to health care delivery issues. By describing the changing roles of the component parts of the U.S. health care system--as well as the technical, economic, political, and social forces responsible for those changes--the new edition of this leading text continues to provide a current and complete overview that is carefully tailored to facilitate both teaching and learning. Now with a customized home page, available at http://publichealth.jbpub.com/healthcareusa/.

Health Care USA: Understanding Its Organization and Delivery, Third Edition, aptly meets all of your teaching needs. Completely updated to reflect new data and developments, Health Care USA covers trends in health care costs; effects of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997; managed care industry consolidation; increasing economic pressure on hospitals; ethics in public health; changing professional perogatives of physicians; more information on nursing and allied health functions; and additional graphics to illustrate key concepts.

• New to this Edition!

  Companion web site with instructional ancillaries, including: instructor's manual, syllabus, learning modules, TestBank, and PowerPoint slides.

• New to this Edition!

  Inclusion of more information on nursing and physical therapy.

• New to this Edition!

  Incorporation of more graphics to illustrate concepts.

• New to this Edition!

  Listing of web site references as an additional resource.

• Organized in a succession of chapters that both stand alone as balanced discussions of subjects and, when read in sequence, provide incremental additions of information ensuring a complete understanding of the health care system.

• Provides understanding of the interplay of technology, work force, research findings, financing, regulation, and personal and professional behaviors, values, and assumptions that determine why, how, where, and at what cost health care is delivered in the U.S.

Chapter 1.  Overview of Health Care: A Population Perspective
Chapter 2.  Benchmark Developments in U.S. Health Care
Chapter 3.  Hospitals: Origin, Organization, and Performance
Chapter 4.  Ambulatory Care
Chapter 5.  Medical Education and the Changing Practice of Medicine
Chapter 6.  Health Care Personnel
Chapter 7.  Financing Health Care
Chapter 8.  Managed Care
Chapter 9.  Long-Term Care
Chapter 10.  Mental Health Services
Chapter 11.  Public Health and the Role of Government in Health Care
Chapter 12.  Research: How Health Care Advances
Chapter 13.  The Future of Health Care