The biggest problem in American health care is us Do you know how to tell good health care from bad health care? Guess again. As patients, we wrongly assume the "best" care is dependent mainly on the newest medications, the most complex treatments, and the smartest doctors. But Americans look for health-care solutions in the wrong places. For example, hundreds of thousands of lives could be saved each year if doctors reduced common errors and maximized preventive medicine. For Dr. Robert Pearl, these kinds of mistakes are a matter of professional importance, but also personal significance: he lost his own father due in part to poor communication and treatment planning by doctors. And consumers make costly mistakes too: we demand modern information technology from our banks, airlines, and retailers, but we passively accept last century's technology in our health care. Solving the challenges of health care starts with understanding these problems. Mistreated explains why subconscious misperceptions are so common in medicine, and shows how modifying the structure, technology, financing, and leadership of American health care could radically improve quality outcomes. This important book proves we can overcome our fears and faulty assumptions, and provides a roadmap for a better, healthier future. Dr. Robert Pearl is the former CEO of The Permanente Medical Group. Named one of Modern Healthcare's fifty most influential physician leaders, Pearl is a clinical professor of plastic surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine and is on the faculty of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he teaches courses on strategy and leadership, and lectures on information technology and health care policy. He is the author of the Washington Post bestseller Mistreated, hosts the popular podcast Fixing Healthcare, publishes a newsletter with over 10,000 subscribers, and is a regular contributor to Forbes. He has been featured on CBS This Morning, CNBC, NPR, and in Time, USA Today, and Bloomberg News, and is a frequent keynote speaker at healthcare and medical technology conferences. "Mistreated is a powerful read, an incredible insight into American health care, a mix of poignant personal memoir by a son, the clinical perspective of an experienced surgeon, and the vision and understanding that comes from being the CEO of one of the largest and best health care organizations in the country. Robert Pearl is all those things, and with Mistreated he proves he is also a wonderful writer."-Abraham Verghese, MD, professor of medicine,Stanford University, and author of Cutting for Stone "Robert Pearl argues that the troubles of the American health care system begin with a problem of perception: conceptual misunderstandings that warp priorities and distort choices. Mistreated is a brilliant and original analysis from one of medicine's most insightful leaders. The doctor is in."-MalcolmGladwell, bestselling author of David and Goliath "Mistreated is a timely and necessary book on how to fix our broken health system from one of our most important voices in health care. Dr. Robert Pearl's diagnosis isn't pretty. Morale in health care is low, costs are unmanageable, and health and survival are often worse than in other high-income countries. But Pearl is a leader who transformed his own health system to have very different results for patients and clinicians alike. And he offers that experience to show everyone the way."-AtulGawande, bestselling author of Being Mortal "Pundits like to speculate about the future of health care, but Dr. Robert Pearl has been busy creating it . . . at scale. As CEO of the nation's largest medical group, he and his colleagues at Kaiser Permanente have created a system serving 10 million members that is low cost, but with nation-leading quality outcomes and high patient satisfaction. They haven't just bent the cost curve, they've wrestled it into submission. If you want to understand how to fix h