Doctored: The Disillusionment of an American Physician Paperback – August 11, 2015

You absolutely must read this book before your next health checkup or hospital visit. It is a huge understatement to say that Dr. Jauhar's book is eye-opening, intelligent, straight-forward, enlightening and shocking. Doctored: The Disillusionment of an American Physician, is a major cautionary tale of were we actually are in 21st century American medicine. It is a very personal, professional and highly revealing look at our US health and medical industry that simultaneously leaves you with a nauseous and hopeful feeling. He also details in clear-speak how we can and must still do far better -- though in reality, genuine improvements may not happen before our grand kids have kids. Even if our Affordable Care Act is a good first step, after reading just the first chapter of Dr. Sandeep Jauhar's latest book, I now realize the ACA is probably just a mere baby step compared to where we still have to go. I wouldn't read Doctored if I was already laying in a hospital bed, fearing it might stress me more. Dr. Jauhar is clearly speaking from experience and the trenches. Everyone I know and love over and under 50 will be asked to read Doctored.

Exceptionally well written personal testament by a very thoughtful young physician. As a similarly disillusioned, but retired physician myself, I can ratify what Dr. Jauhar says. His cautions about the stresses on the US medical system should be heeded by all. The current and future lack of primary care medicine in our country is approaching the crisis level. Recommended reading for anyone involved in healthcare management.

An indictment of the fee for service system of medicine in the US, cardiologist and New York Times contributor Dr. Sandeep Jauhar describes the inherent conflict of interest between doctors and their patients. Early on, the author makes the distinction between practitioners as either knights (noble), knaves (exploiters) and pawns (followers). He details a system where the profit motive rules over quality patient care. Dr. Jauhar describes how doctors, pressured to see more and more patients, often make hasty decisions about patient care. He illustrates how medical testing, particularly image and stress testing, is overused. Dr. Jauhar discusses the quid pro quo referral system that enriches doctors sometimes to the determent of patients. As a layman I found the book easy to understand and very engrossing. I finished it quickly.Dr. Jauhar's frank talk about his personal struggles elevates this book to five star status. He speaks candidly about middle age, family dynamics, financial struggles, greedy doctors and (as a reserved person) his struggle to play the politics necessary to drum up enough business to make a private practice profitable. As one of his colleagues said to him, you are not a smiley face person. Granted it is sometimes hard to have empathy for with Dr. Jauhar. He has a loving wife and children, guaranteed lifetime employment and when he gives up living in Manhattan for financial reasons, he settles for a large house in the suburbs.This book opened my eyes about the business of medicine and hopefully going forward I will be a wiser and more vigilant consumer.

I like a lot of what Sandeep Jauhar has written, mainly op-eds in the NY Times. So I found myself utlimately disappointed at his largely self-pitying view of a physician's life. Most of the book is about his struggles to earn enough money to support himself and his family doing managed care medicine, which he argues has forced thousands of physicians to do unnecessary tests and overload their cases to make ends meet. Even as an attending physician at a major New York area hospital, he struggles to pay his bills. It's only after you realize that his apartment is in Manhattan, one of the most expensive locations on the planet, and that he sends his son to private school there which must cost a small fortune (because, he claims, the public school is terrible), that you start to realize this guy is simply making bad choices. In the end, after several years of financial struggles and several chapters trying to convince the reader how hard life is for the average physician does it occur to him that he can lower his expenses without raisng his income: move to Long Island, where his hospital is anyway! But it takes until the last chapters for him to experience this revelation. He buys a house in a nice neighborhood and sends his kid to public school. What a concept!! I was briefly on the faculty of a med school and have known a lot of doctors. None of them fit the portrait Jauhar paints here. If you've been to any hospital recently and had to park you will have noticed the obvious difference in the doctors' - not the patient and visitors' and staff's - cars. Guess who have more Teslas and Lexuses and Porches and Corvettes? It isn't even close. Jauhar is a beautiful writer and a keen observer of nature. But his effort at self reflection here falls flat. If he had moved to an apartment on Long Island in the first place he'd have had nothing to write about. It's a shame because he can be an incisive thinker and a geat communicator. But he isn't here. Ultimately, many readers, not the doctor, may be the ones "disillusioned."