Healthcare Choices: 5 Steps to Getting the Medical Care You Want and Need

Making healthcare decisions is hard, but making the right choices has never mattered more.

Healthcare Choices: 5 Steps to Getting the Care You Want and Need gives you the tools you need to choose the best medical care—for you. Archelle Georgiou, MD, explains her CARES model, the formula she developed to help family, friends, and thousands of television viewers make smart healthcare decisions that balance the best medical options with individual preferences. Using more than 30 real-life stories and insider tips, she demonstrates how to use this step-by-step guide to access the medical information you need to evaluate your options and make well-informed choices. Whether you are addressing a life-threatening illness, self-managing a minor ailment, selecting a doctor, or buying insurance, Georgiou’s roadmap shows you how to be an active participant in your care.

Her “go to” approach describes how to:

• Identify all treatment options for an illness, including those not mentioned by your doctor.
• Make treatment decisions that reflect your priorities and preferences.
• Find the best doctor to treat your condition.
• Communicate with your doctor and make shared treatment decisions.
• Choose the health insurance plan that’s right for you.

Georgiou, an M.D. who served as chief medical officer of United HealthCare, knows her subject matter. To help Americans make good medical choices, she recommends following her own CARES model. She presents its five sensible, empowering steps: understand your condition, know your alternatives, respect your preferences, evaluate your options, and start taking action. A compelling storyteller, Georgiou, who also reports on health news for a Twin Cities television station, includes questions from the public about everything from bad breath to toenail fungus along with her responses. She also uses the power of numbers effectively. Noting, for example, that 40 websites provide 'report cards' on physicians, but only 23 percent of Americans have used them. All doctors are not created equal, Georgiou reminds us, so check them out (HealthGrades.com is a good start). She also points out that only half of patients takes medications as prescribed, and she offers interesting, relevant trivia. The most common reason for an office visit? A cough. What’s the leading cause of bankruptcy? Unpaid medical bills. Georgiou provides readers with sound tools to be better-informed patients. ― Booklist

Archelle Georgiou, MD’s book is outstanding. . . . As a medical professional with 39 years of experience dealing with multiple family medical issues, I approached this review with a healthy dose of skepticism and doubt that any book intended for the public could actually help navigate the mess that our health care system has become. I was wrong. This book is an easy read for consumers and clinicians, offers excellent advice, and would make a wonderful textbook for an introductory course on effective health care decision making for a wide variety of audiences. ― Family Medicine

You are the expert on you, especially when it comes to your healthcare! If you use Dr. Georgiou's simple process, you will empower yourself to pursue personalized healthcare choices, leading to better care, better cost, and better outcomes. We require this of all other industries...it is time for us to demand it of healthcare! -- Stephen Bonner, Entrepreneur in Residence at Harvard Business School; former CEO of Cancer Treatment Centers of America

In the final analysis, good healthcare starts with the relationship between the patient and the individual care provider – and the knowledge and understanding gained through personal interactions between these two people. Our current system has unfortunately made this relationship more difficult, with the far too frequent result being misinformation, frustration, anxiety, waste and suboptimal outcomes. It is critically important for all of us to understand what is going on with our own health and care, and how to better ourselves through the questions we ask and the knowledge we gain from the caregivers in whom we trust our very lives. -- William W. McGuire, MD, Former Chairman & CEO, UnitedHealth Group, Owner, Minnesota United FC

Making the right healthcare decisions for you and your loved ones is confusing, yet very consequential. The more engaged and activated you are in your care, the better your outcomes. Archelle’s fantastic new book provides a framework and practical tools to help ensure the best care possible. We should not only read it; we should use it. -- Peter Pronovost, MD, PhD, Director of the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality, Johns Hopkins Medicine ; author of Safe Patients, Smart Hospitals: How One Doctor's Checklist Can Help Us Change Health Care from the Inside Out

We live in a world filled with medical information. The challenge for Americans is figuring out what is worth paying attention to and how to use it. At 5 Eyewitness News (KSTP-TV in Minneapolis-St. Paul) we have a unique resource to help our viewers sift through the good, the bad and the indifferent. Her name is Dr. Archelle Georgiou. She helps our viewers by going beyond the headlines. Digging past the obvious to get to the most important information, and then articulating the information in a way that can be understood by non-medical professionals. Maybe more importantly she educates our viewers why they need to be and how they can be their own healthcare advocates. Anyone willing to listen to what Dr. Georgiou can teach us will not be disappointed. -- Rob Hubbard, president and chief executive, Hubbard Television Group

Dr. Georgiou’s friendly yet direct approach for taking control of our health decisions, including difficult end-of-life planning, is invaluable advice for all. It reinforces that our health is truly determined by the choices we make! -- Tim Lukenda, President and CEO, Extendicare Inc. and Esprit Lifestyle Communities

Archelle Georgiou, MD, is a nationally recognized physician and consumer advocate. As former Chief Medical Officer of UnitedHealthcare, she changed the company’s policies and eliminated the bureaucratic hassles that managed care companies impose on patients and physicians. She uses the media as a vehicle to educate consumers about their health and has a regular health news segment on KSTP-TV in Minneapolis. Archelle is an Executive in Residence at the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management.