Seeking Value

Book excerpt: The U.S. health care system is the most expensive in the world by a considerable margin, yet health indicators are among the worst in the developed world. Seeking Value: Balancing Cost and Quality in Psychiatric Care, a comprehensive volume by the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry's Mental Health Services Committee, examines the factors that have contributed to this disparity and offers a holistic vision for health care reform--one in which the psychiatric profession plays a pivotal role. From cost consciousness in the prescribing of medications and forming alliances with other health professionals to rethinking the way health care is financed and efforts to eliminate counterproductive incarceration practices, this guide outlines individual, systemic, and sociopolitical interventions that will position readers to effect substantive change both in the short term and in the long term. Beyond spurring thought and conversation around how to improve value in the services the psychiatric profession provides and the systems in which it operates, this book will equip those looking to develop a concrete advocacy agenda and the strategies needed to see it realized.