
Ilana Yurkiewicz, M.D.
It’s a cliché to say that American health care is broken. Ilana Yurkiewicz, M.D., a Stanford University oncologist and internal medicine physician, says journalists should be more specific. The central problem, she argues, is that health care is fragmented.
“Fragmented” is the title of a new book in which Yurkiewicz, who’s written about medicine for such publications as Undark and Hematology News, describes barriers that prevent physicians from seeing a patient’s full medical narrative.
Health systems can’t easily share records. Electronic health records bury information. Payment systems de-prioritize follow-up. Grueling 28-hour shifts for medical residents discourage accountability. Primary care is underfunded. Sub-specialization is emphasized at the expense of holistic care.
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Mary Chris Jaklevic is AHCJ's topic leader for patient safety. She has been a contributor to HealthNewsReview.org, a project that aimed to improve health care journalism by critiquing the accuracy and balance of media messages about medical interventions, and was an AHCJ board member from 2005 to 2009.