Misdiagnosed: A Healthcare System’s Failure

Best Seller TV, the only show dedicated to covering today’s best-selling business books on C-Suite TV,  is announcing a new episode featuring David Black, author of Ripped Apart: Living Misdiagnosed. Gary and Carol Stern’s Epic Fight Against Malpractice in the American Healthcare System. The interview also features Carol Stern, one of the book’s protagonists and her story of perseverance.

We all understand the U.S. healthcare system is a complicated, bureaucratic institution. While there are plenty of good stories to tell, this one isn’t. This book is a four-year journey where Black goes into excruciating detail telling the story of Gary and Carol Stern and the abject failure of the healthcare system. Gary Stern spent three years with his internal organs outside of his body – however, Black thinks of the book as a love story. A story of a dedicated wife who advocated for her husband fought one of the largest industries and even the White House.

Black states that the “healthcare system is incoherent” and “schizophrenic.” On the one hand, it’s meant to heal the sick, while on the other hand, it’s a highly bureaucratic entity and those two things don’t go together.

He says one-way patients (and their loved ones) can better protect themselves from medical errors is to ask questions. “Keep asking questions until you get an answer you can understand,” he urges. Once patients do that, they will be better equipped to make better judgments about their own healthcare.

This book is for everyone, or anyone, who has had to navigate the healthcare system and become an advocate to those who need one. Stern emphasizes that notoriety is not the ultimate goal for her, but she hopes that her story changes what patients go through that could lead to malpractice and for medical professionals to admit their mistakes sooner too and; hopefully, offer better treatment options.

As a long-time writer for television, and other books, Black says there are only three types of stories in the world: writer against something larger (fate, God, nature), people and other people, and person up (or against) his/herself. This story touched all three categories, making it an incredibly descriptive project, rather than merely a superficial one.

Stern advises people to push the envelope if they don’t feel they’re getting the right answer and listen to what the patient is saying as no one knows their bodies better.

All episodes of Best Seller TV air on C-Suite TV and are hosted by TV personality, Taryn Winter Brill.

Best-selling author, speaker, and former Fortune 100 CMO Jeffrey Hayzlett created Best Seller TV to give top-tier business authors a forum for sharing thought-provoking insights, in-depth business analysis, and their compelling personal narratives.

“The healthcare system is an incredibly convoluted system, made even more confusing by the layers of bureaucracy constantly in our way,” Hayzlett said. “As a veteran writer, David has painstakingly highlighted the battle of Gary and Carol Stern – in great detail, to serve as a wake-up call for those currently battling the system as well as the medical professionals trying to balance their jobs with their fear of getting sued. This is a different book and interview, but I hope it shines a light on a problem that we all have experienced or will experience, throughout our lives.”

For more information on TV episodes, visit www.csuiteold.c-suitenetwork.com/tv and for more information about the authors featured in Best Seller TV episodes, visit www.c-suitebookclub.com.