NEWS

Quantros President & CMO, Sanjaya Kumar, MD, Writes Book

Fatal Care: Survive in the U.S. Health System Will be Published in Early 2008

December 9, 2007 - Orlando, FL - Sanjaya Kumar, MD, President and Chief Medical Officer of Quantros, announces that his new book Fatal Care: Survive in the U.S. Health System will be published in early 2008.

“It’s no coincidence we’re making this announcement at IHI’s Annual National Forum on Quality Improvement in Healthcare,” says Dr. Kumar. “IHI has long stood for progressive leadership in the ongoing mission to improve the quality and safety of our health care system.”

Books will be available at Quantros.com and fine bookstores throughout the USA.

About Fatal Care

Each year as many as 98,000 patient deaths occur in the U.S. as a result of preventable medical errors in hospitals. Preventable medical errors alone impact or harm at least 5 million Americans annually, costing more than $17 billion. These sobering statistics from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) provide a glimpse into a national crisis that harms or kills hundreds of innocent people each day. But they are only nameless, faceless numbers and can’t illustrate the human cost behind the data. Moreover, they only reveal the problem and not the underlying causes or potential solutions.

Fatal Care takes readers behind the statistics and into the lives of those who have experienced, first hand, the impact of what these numbers represent. Their individual stories embody all of the drama and tension seldom found in books of this genre. The portraits of these flesh-and-blood characters and their families will resonate with readers and draw them into the painful events of their lives.

Fatal Care is unique and unlike other healthcare-related books, blending true, real-life dramas that illustrate gaps in the healthcare system with factual information and analysis for healthcare consumers and professionals. Every case in this book brings to life the chain of events that led to mishaps, and proposes solutions to prevent future mistakes and protect future patients.

Having read a story about an adverse event in the life of a character, the reader’s interest will be piqued. Readers will be strongly motivated to learn more about how the situation occurred and how they can prevent such adverse events from happening in their own lives—and the information will be there for them, immediately available. Each chapter ends with a brief synopsis of causes and potential remedies in the format of critical safeguards and fatal points that readers can use to help prevent future errors like those portrayed in the story.

While other books address the ongoing problem of medical errors and their consequences, they are dry, factual depictions that lack details and are more similar to textbooks. Each of the ten chapters in Fatal Care is devoted to a separate case, telling the story through a compelling narrative of creative non-fiction. Some of the stories involve tragedy, but others will highlight heroic action and triumph.

Because people learn best through storytelling, this gripping book has the power to inform, entertain and most importantly, change behavior. These ten stories will increase public awareness of this daunting crisis and offer directed guidance to individuals for safely navigating the turbulent waters of the US health system.

Title: Fatal Care: Survive in the U.S. Health System
Publisher: IGI Publishing, Minneapolis, MN
Available: January, 2008 (anticipated date)
To purchase: visit www.quantros.com