Practice Management Books

Pain can have a deleterious impact on personality and on relationships. In Living Through Pain: Psalms And The Search For Wholeness, Kristin Swenson (Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, School of World Studies, Virginia Commonwealth University) charts the multifaceted personal and social problems caused by chronic pain and surveys professional efforts to mitigate and manage it. Swenson also consults selected psalms from the Hebrew Bible which demonstrate that the challenge of living through pain is both timely and timeless as these ancient texts offer a vocabulary and a grammar for understanding and expressing the contemporary experience of pain. Pain is a universal experience, and Living Through Pain invites readers to consider more fully what is involved in the medical, psychological, spiritual, and personal process of healing. Highly recommended reading for anyone who suffers, or who has a friend or loved one who suffers, from the debilitating effects of chronic pain.

This outstanding resource gives physicians and office administrators quantitative information needed to make informed decisions and set their practice on a sound fiscal foundation. In an easy-to-understand format, the book outlines 12 pragmatic actions you must take to bring more cash, to expedite turnaround from service to collection, lower bad debt expense, increase staff productivity, and enhance patient service. Each chapter ends with specific "To Do List." To accomplish desired results, do not just read this book - follow up and implement the "To Do Lists."

Yuval Lirov, Practicing Profitability - Billing Network Effect for Revenue Cycle Control in Healthcare Clinics and Chiropractic Offices: Collections, Audit Risk, SOAP Notes, Scheduling, Care Plans, and Coding

I reviewed Conrad's other book, "The Green Archipelago", and this book is of the same caliber. Easy to read, and very informative for the reason I purchased it. I was able to use the facts for my research paper and my English professor enjoyed reading it; I got the A+ I needed and I passed my course this semester with one of the highest grades in the class.

Malcolm Hunter provided the first accessible, operational synthesis of landscape ecology, wildlife biology, and forestry in his "Wildlife, Forests, and Forestry." That book has proven indispensable for me during my career as a forest wildlife biologist. "Maintaining Biodiversity in Forest Ecosystems" is even better.

In the Foreword, Jack Ward Thomas says that he wishes that he had written this book. I wish I could write like these authors! The editing is first-class and a joy to read. Given the list of contributors, how could you lose? The organization is also quite logical, with papers organized into landscape- and stand-level topics.

For those of you who like to know what you're buying, here are the authors and their contributions (all of the chapters are excellent): Hunter: Biological diversity // Hunter and Seymour: Principles of ecological forestry // Palik and Engstrom: Species composition // Spies and Turner: Dynamic forest mosaics // Hansen and Rotella: Abiotic factors // Matlack and Litvaitis: Forest edges // Haila: Islands and fragments // Brinson and Verhoeven: Riparian forests // Calhoun: Wetlands // McComb and Lindenmayer: Dying, dead, and down trees // Brokaw and Lent: Vertical structure // Moore and Allen: Plantation forestry // Thompson and Angelstam: Special species // Millar: Genetic diversity // Frelich and Puettman: Restoration ecology // Norton: Forest reserves // Oliver, Boydak, Segura, and Bare: Forest organization, management, and policy // Lippke and Bishop: The economic perspective // Maguire: Social perspectives //

This book is borrowed more often than any of the others in my collection. What else can I say?

I am currently studying a degree in Management and have found this book to be an essential part of my studies. There has not yet been a project I have been given that wasn't covered in this informative book. A must for all Business or Management students!

The relationship between top management consultancy teams and their clients is reviewed through a series of case studies from large organizations working in both the public and private sectors to analyze the best consulting practices in management in Fiona Czerniawska & Paul May's MEASURING CONSULTING IN PRACTICE. Each case study is used as a foundation for analysis by a leading consulting industry commentator and a business technology author and consultant, making this a hard-hitting pick recommended for any serious business library collection.

If you have need to know about the management of your pond or lake, this book is a must have. It will more than pay back its cost.

Vitalism is a profoundly science-ejected concept, though many CAM or 'natural health' cabals falsely claim that vitalism survives scientific scrutiny.

I quote:

"by the end of the 19th century the concept of the prevailing 'specific vital force' ('vitalism'), thought to be essential for living organisms, lost its popularity [p.262...] it was Wohler, and later Kolbe in 1845 who synthesized acetic acid, who helped banish 'vital force,' or 'vitalism,' from organic chemistry and from science altogether [p.265]."

-r.c.

This book reviews applied concepts of the management of shared fish stocks. I've used it in my Ph.D. course, discussing this theme in Brazil and presenting important considerations about that, related to brazilian fish stocks shared with Uruguay and Argentina. Essential for anyone who works with international fisheries.

I am a Psychologist by training and I have been a member of the faculty of a Family Medicine Residency Program for over 10 years. Back in June of 2003 a research article was published in NEJM [Volume 348(26) June 26 pp 2635-2645] entitled "The Quality of Health Care Delivered to Adults in the United States". It resulted in Tom Brokaw's statement on the evening news roughly translated as "At the hands of their physicians, American's receive the level of care recommended by experts around 50% of the time". (The actual number was 54.9%)

After reading the article, I learned that for some diseases the numbers were better and for some they were much worse. For alcohol dependence, recommended care is delivered by physicians 10.5% of the time! This was the worst adherence to recommended processes of all that were assessed.

Since that time, I have striven to incorporate addictions treatment into our resident's training by providing a rotation at a local addictions treatment facility. I have also emphasized the topic of addictions in periodic lectures. Despite my efforts, residents often avoid or resist "going there" in part because of commonly held misconceptions about addictions, because addicted patients can be challenging to treat, and because of their ignorance on how to effectively make a difference in their addicted patient's lives. This book has made my job easier in that it succinctly summarizes what physician educators (and their residents need to know to reverse this disturbing deficit in the care American primary care patients are getting.

I particularly appreciated the Author's detailed coverage of assessment, non-pharmacologic interventions such as Motivational Interviewing, and pharmacologic interventions. The book is very practical and it contains a wealth of factual information. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to become knowledgeable about this important topic.