Description

Medical mistakes claim more lives each year than breast cancer, AIDS, and motor-vehicle crashes combined; an estimated 40,000 incidents of medical harm happen every day. Millions more Americans suffer from indifferent, outdated health care. The good news is that you can prevent this from happening to you or a family member. Better yet, you can find the very best care in the world.

In this book, attorney Patrick Malone, co-author of Rules of the Road, offers sensible advice and real-life anecdotes that will inspire you to take charge of your own health care, make the best choices, and avoid serious harm. With the "Necessary Nine"—the essential steps to finding the best medical care—The Life You Save offers vital information such as:

• The single most important question you can ask your doctor
• Why a top primary care doctor is your best ally, and where to find one
• How to sort fact from hype in medical news
• When to know you have symptoms your doctor should not shrug off
• Checklists to help you get out of the hospital in one piece
• Where to locate the best surgeons and safest hospitals

With an extensive Resources section and a chapter on what do to if medical error has occurred, The Life You Save is the guide to getting the health care you need and deserve. This book is a must have not only for you and your family, but for every client that steps in your office.

Media Coverage

10/03/2009 — People’s Pharmacy interviews Patrick Malone.
Listen to the interview

Reviews

1. As a broadcast journalist, I know the vital importance of checking facts. As Patrick Malone teaches us in his great new book, nothing can be more important than checking the facts about your own health. It’s a matter of life and death.
   —Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews

2. This important book teaches patients and their families how to catch mistakes before they cause injury or death.
   —Sidney Wolfe, MD; Editor, Worstpills.org; Director, Health Research Group at Public Citizen

3. Our healthcare system cures, but it also kills. This book thoughtfully chronicles the harm that can result from medical errors and poor quality care, and—most importantly—arms patients with information that will help them and their loved ones avoid becoming a victim. Read it, and stay safe.
   —Robert M. Wachter, MD; Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco; author of Internal Bleeding and Understanding Patient Safety

4. Pat Malone started out exposing medical blunders for the Miami Herald, then became a patients’ lawyer making doctors and hospitals pay for their mistakes. Now he has written a terrific guide to help people avoid some of those appalling mistakes and their miserable consequences. This is not an exercise in "first, kill all the doctors." Rather, it is a recognition that health care providers are mortal—sometimes distracted or tired, sometimes not well-informed about a particular patient’s problem. Malone strikes a neat balance in this well-written volume. From his own cases, he offers enough heart-breaking stories of medical whiffs to motivate even the most sluggardly patient. But he mostly provides a series of crisp, sensible steps that patients should take to protect themselves by making sure they have the right doctor or hospital, that the doctor has heard what the problem really is, that diagnoses and drug regimens make sense, and that health care providers are following sound protocols.
   —David O. Stewart

5. As a physician, I strongly recommend that anyone should read and own this book who will visit a doctor, go to an emergency room, be in a hospital, see a specialist, undergo surgery or in any way interact with the health care system personally or on behalf of a family member. So that means everybody. Since this reviewer went to medical school in the 1970′s we have had extraordinary and spectacular innovations in medicine. But this explosion in knowledge and skill carries downsides. The probability of error or simply receiving mediocre care increases.
    
   How does any prospective patient find optimal care and avoid the risks of poor outcome or harm? Patrick Malone provides all of us a road map to secure for ourselves and our loved ones the best available primary care providers, specialists, surgeons, hospitals, and standards of practice within a health care system that will grow only more complicated, both for good and ill.
    
   The book is organized around what he calls the necessary nine: (1) get your medical records, read them, and organize them; (2) learn how to talk to your doctor efficiently and effectively by making a list, leaving a list, and taking a list; (3) find the best primary care doctor you can, and he gives you the ways to do this; (4) learn the safe, sensible- and skeptical- approach to using medications; (5) understand why all medical tests are flawed and to seek a second opinion at every crucial crossroad in diagnosis and possible treatment; (6) how to chose a surgeon and the checklist for safe surgery; (7) having an advocate with you at every significant health care encounter, particularly in the hospital; (8) how to steer clear of the major hazards of hospitals and how to find hospitals that maximize safety and quality; and (9) how to educate yourself and audit your care if you develop a chronic disease.
    
   The appendices of the book are little gold mines: Appendix A: 28 things that should never happen in a health care facility. Appendix B: high risk situations in biopsy diagnosis of cancer. Appendix C: 15 steps you can take to reduce your risk of hospital infection.
    
   The richness of the book is in its simplicity and power. The nine steps outlined are easy and available to any thoughtful person, and their power to correct the current problems in your health care and to protect you from disasters is immeasurable. And, if you doubt him, Pat Malone brings it home by case examples that you simply cannot ignore.
    
   Full Disclosure: This reviewer is an acquaintance of the author and had the opportunity to read this wonderful book in draft form. Even before its publication the techniques outlined have helped this reviewer manage his and his family’s health care and assisted many of his own patients’ forays into other hospitals and specialty clinics. In several instances Pat Malone’s system has certainly prevented them and their loved ones from significant problems. Own this book. Keep it handy.
   —J. A. Thomson Jr. MD

6. With an engaging style and poignant stories, Patrick Malone explains simple steps one can take to obtain excellent medical care, and avoid the many pitfalls of our medical system. In addition to being a fine read, Malone’s book is filled with invaluable practical recommendations, within reach of practically all readers. People can obtain their own medical records and test results, and those records often point to flaws in care, or at least point to issues that need to be probed. Everyone can make a list of their questions, and take them to their doctor’s office on the next appointment. Everyone can work to insure that their own primary care physician is at least kept in the loop in the ordering of specialty care—a step that can help avoid unnecessary, sometimes troubled tangents.
    
   Malone brings to his book decades of experience as an attorney representing people who have suffered serious injury as the result of medical negligence and, previously, as a newspaper reporter dedicated to exposing achievements and failures of American medicine. His background shows in the readability, depth, and intelligence of The Life You Save: Nine Steps to Finding the Best Medical Care—and Avoiding the Worst.
   —William Lazarus