New Book about Current State of America’s Healthcare System
An entertaining and engaging fictionalized story based on hard to swallow facts, “Bless This Mess: A Picture Story of Healthcare in America” by Stephen K. Klasko, MD, MBA, chronicles a futuristic look back at America’s past and current healthcare system as reviewed by the Intergalactic Health Council. The book humorously presents the facts on the ground supported by amusing illustrations and aims to empower readers and citizens of the U.S. to take action and demand change.
It is the year 2035 and the United States of America has been invited to join the Council after finally becoming a cool healthcare system for all its people and actually figuring out how to send patients a believable understandable bill. Utilizing pop culture references, the book reflects on America’s dark healthcare past. With a detailed look at the year 2018 when the Affordable Care Act gave much greater access to a fundamentally broken, fragmented, expensive and inequitable healthcare system, readers are taken on an alarming but educational journey.
With a unique story telling approach, and with illustrations by the talented Chrissie Bonner, the book reflects on what is wrong with the current system and what is going right for other “planets.” It asks the questions, what needs to be disrupted quickly in order to reach the goal of joining the Council and why has everything else, such as retail and entertainment, progressed over the past 40 years along with technological advances, but the U.S. healthcare system has not? Although the book jokingly warns that it is not a children’s story due to the scary nature of the facts presented within, it provides a call to action for upcoming generations to be the missing link to an optimistic future by causing real transformation via a consumer revolution to create a healthcare ecosystem that allows humans and technology to work toward a future where the patient is the “boss.”
Named by Modern Healthcare as one of the “100 Most Influential People in Healthcare,” Dr Klasko is the President and CEO of Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health. He has been a transformative leader and advocate for a revolution in healthcare delivery and higher education which inspired him to write “Bless This Mess.” He is also the author, along with Dr. Greg Shea, of 2016’s “We CAN Fix Healthcare: The Future Is Now.”
“It’s time to take a no-limits approach to healthcare and stop making excuses for why we cannot overcome our cost, access, quality and patient experience issues,” said Dr. Klasko. “There is no reason for the most important aspect of your life—your health—to have a fragmented service model while every other sector of our lives such as entertainment, travel and shopping have become seamless experiences.”
In “Bless This Mess,” Dr. Klasko sketches the “mess” of healthcare in America and tours the galaxy to find planets where different decisions led to radically different outcomes. Through his book, Dr. Klasko asks what will be obvious in the future and challenges readers to do those things now.
“Klasko and crew are tremendously skilled writers who adeptly use humor and self-deprecation to keep you turning the page.” – Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN Chief Medical Correspondent, review of Dr. Klasko’s “We CAN Fix Healthcare in America”
About the author, Stephen K. Klasko, MD, MBA
“Bless This Mess” is Dr. Stephen K. Klasko’s third book having previously published “The Phantom Stethoscope” and “We CAN Fix Healthcare in America” and is also the editor in chief of the journal “Healthcare Transformation.” He became the President and CEO of Philadelphia-based Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health in 2013 where he has steered one of the nation’s fastest growing academic health institutions based on his vision of re-imagining health care and higher education. Dr. Klasko’s record of success at creating and implementing programs that are shaping the future of health care earned him a place on Modern Healthcare’s list of the “100 Most Influential People in Healthcare” and “Most Influential Physician Executives” in 2017. That same year, his entrepreneurial leadership and success at recruiting helped Thomas Jefferson UniversityHospital achieve a #16 ranking – and elite Honor Roll status – on U.S. News & World Report’s Best Hospitals list.
